


Five Times Jess Mariano Said He Loved You (And One Time He Didn't)

by MythicalCatie



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Five Times, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-01-15 03:51:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12313224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MythicalCatie/pseuds/MythicalCatie
Summary: Jess Mariano wasn't typically one for shows of affection. In standard circumstances, he was more of the emotionally distant, never show his true feelings type. Here are five times that you were the exception, and one time when you just plain weren't.





	1. Chapter 1

Quietly, you sat at the counter of Luke's Diner, reading and nearing the end of your third book that week. Occasionally, you absentmindedly took a sip of your coffee or a bite of your waffles, which had been ready for you when you walked in the door. It was your usual, part of a finely honed routine.

First, you'd wake up at about six in the morning, the sunshine just barely peeking through your curtains. Then, you'd spend a few minutes in bed before rising to get dressed, because, let's face it, you were **definitely** not a morning person. After you got dressed and brushed your hair and teeth, you made sure that your mother, Lorelai, was awake and said goodbye to her before heading to Luke's Diner. That landed you where you were right now, sitting at the counter, being greeted by the owner, and being met with an already prepared breakfast. What could you say? It was just a perk that you received because your mother was dating the guy that ran the place. When you had your breakfast, you pulled out your book and read it while you patiently waited for your boyfriend, Jess, to come downstairs so that you and he could head off to school together. That had been your Monday through Friday morning routine, rain or shine, for a little over six months now. Although you didn't thoroughly enjoy waking up a half an hour earlier than you had grown accustomed to, you wouldn't have it any other way if it meant more time with one of your favorite people.

Slowly, you turned to page one hundred and ninety-nine to page two hundred of the book that you had started just the day before, _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban_. It was the third in its series and although it had been released in September of the previous year, you were only just now getting around to reading it in September of the following. You had read its two predecessors in their entirety but never rushed to read a new installment when it was released. There was a method in the madness in the order that you read books, and _Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban_ was numbered fourteen in a set of thirty novels that you had set aside to read. Of course, you vowed not to touch it until the thirteen that came before it had been finished first. But before that, you had a couple of other sets to read before even that one had a finger laid on it. It was only right, after all, but it certainly put you behind the eight ball in comparison to other fans. 

You were actually quite enjoying the novel, just as you had enjoyed the rest of the books in the series that had been released so far. Fantasy was one of your favorite genres, along with some of the teenage fiction book, and Harry Potter was surely one of your favorite fantasy series that you had read so far. So, you didn't mind if Jess was taking a bit longer than usual, due to the fact that you probably wouldn't be able to put the book away when he came down anyhow.

While you were in the middle of page two hundred and eight, you felt the bound pages being pulled away from your face and a set of lips gently pressing against your own. They were soft and careful against your mouth, inviting and familiar, much like a favorite stuffed animal. You'd know them anywhere, even if there **was** only one possibility as to who was kissing you. 

It turned out that you were mistaken on the front of not being able to put the book away because now, you'd drop it in an instant.

"Morning," the seventeen year old greeted when he pulled away, giving you a small smile in welcome once your lips were detached from his. He was dressed casually, as always, in a (rather aesthetically loud) Metallica shirt and blue jeans. His backpack was slung over his right shoulder, but, little did you know, contained nothing needed for school. It wouldn’t surprise you even if you did know, though, if you were being frank. The words “Jess Mariano” and “studious” were only used together in one sentence and it was the following: “Jess Mariano is **not** , by any means, studious.”  

"Morning," you greeted with a grin in return, leaning up and over slightly so that you could peck the black haired boy on the cheek. "You certainly took longer than usual getting that cute butt of yours down here. I finished fifty-seven and a half pages waiting for you. I normally can only get through twenty before my kiss."

"Yeah, well I spent a couple extra minutes in bed today...- 'And a half', you say? Well, finish the other half and then we'll get going," Jess told you before grabbing a blueberry muffin from the display case and taking a bite out of it. Just as you had been patient in waiting for him, he didn't mind standing around for a couple of moments while you finished a page, chapter, or in cases where you were really close to the end, the book.

Once your boyfriend had told you that he'd wait, you wrapped up reading page two hundred and eight. You didn't worry about rushing through it because you knew that you were a quick reader and it would only take you a minute or so anyway, but also because you knew that **Jess** wouldn't rush you. He thought it to be endearing that you were such an avid reader, always carrying a book (or five) with you at all times, wherever you went. But the teenager thought your "reading face", as he called it, to be especially cute. It was just that you looked so focused and immersed in the world that contained itself between two covers. You seemed to place yourself in the shoes of the characters you read about, and for some reason, Jess regarded it as one of the most adorable things in the world.

As soon as you finished the last line of the page, you slipped your "Don't Judge a Book by Its Movie" bookmark in the rightful slot before shutting the cover and placing the novel back in your bag. Then, you zipped it closed and stood, tossing it onto your shoulder lazily.

With one last sip of your coffee and a couple more bites of your waffle, you were ready to go. You hated to leave a good breakfast unfinished, but you disliked being late for first period even more. So, off you had to be.

"Thanks for the breakfast, Luke," you acknowledged, shooting him a smile.

"No problem. Want me to get you a to-go cup of coffee and put the rest of those waffles in a container?" the man inquired. He always had to ask, even if your answer was always no. You, unlike some other Gilmores that he knew, actually had breakfast foods at breakfast time, only requesting a cheeseburger and fries at lunch or dinnertime, and, you didn't eat until you were full enough that if you were a normal person, your stomach would burst. Well, not so early in the morning, anyway. So, he always wanted to make sure that you were at least moderately sated before you left his establishment.   

With a shake of your head, you politely declined Luke's offer. "No, I'm good. Thanks anyway, though. Come on, Jess, we don't wanna be late." Well, **you** didn't. You knew that your boyfriend couldn't care less if he was tardy. However, you had taken it upon yourself to make sure that his attendance record improved, and so far, you were doing a pretty good job of it.

While before you came along into Jess's life, his uncle had to worry if he was getting to school at all, now, he could rest easy knowing that you'd **ensure** it. You and Jess had the same schedule, so you never had to let him out of your sight, really. Even if you wanted him to be, there was no class that he'd be away from you for unless he made the decision to skip it (which you'd hate to happen on your watch).

"Yeah, yeah," he sighed, swallowing the last bite of his muffin before coming around the counter. "I'm coming."

A moment later, you felt an arm snake around your waist and you smiled as Jess pulled your body close to his.

With that, you were out the door and crossing the street, en route to Stars Hollow High. It was just across the street from the diner, so it never took you very long to get there, which had always been a plus. This was especially true in the early days when Jess would still try to ditch school; there was never much chance for him to escape, as the building was only about thirty seconds away and he had a very small window of opportunity. Even if he tried, for a while there, Luke watched him like a hawk until he entered the front doors. He’d be caught before he even made it onto the next sidewalk over.

However, while you were headed straight for the building, your darling had other plans. Once you reached the sidewalk that housed your destination, you felt Jess's arm leave its place around your waist, and when you looked over, he was rounding the corner (without even a bid farewell in sight, might you add).

In response to seeing this, you caught up to him and grabbed his shirt, effectively stopping him in his tracks. When he turned to face you, you asked, "Just where do you think you're going, mister?"

Jess looked at you like you had just asked the question with the most obvious answer in the world, but he humored you and answered it anyway. "What does it look like, Y/N? I'm ditching. I'm not in the mood today."

You rolled your eyes at the admittance, then tried to pull Jess back toward the school. Unfortunately for you, you were weaker than he was and he had dug his heels into the pavement. There was no way that he was moving now unless he chose to. "Jess, you can't ditch. Remember, we talked about this? We want to graduate together. If you get held back, I'll be a senior before you are and we can't graduate at the same time because you'll still be a junior. You don't want that, do you? Because I sure don't. Now, come on. Let's get to class, baby."

Although you were fifteen and Jess was seventeen, you were both juniors. While your twin, Rory, had done well enough at Stars Hollow High to get accepted into Chilton Academy in Hartford for that year, you did well enough in your freshman year that the school figured you were so smart that the sophomore classes would only be a waste of your time. So, they let you skip right to your junior year, effectively catching you up with Jess.

"Y/N, I just don't want to go to class today. One ditch day won't kill me. I haven't missed a day of school when it was in session since we started dating. I'm just not in the mood to go today. Besides, it's Friday. What important school work gets done on a **Friday**? It's just one day, babe. What's the big deal?"

Sighing, you pulled Jess closer and wrapped your arms around him. "The big deal, Jess, is that if you ditch today, first off, it'll become a habit again. Secondly, I'll miss you while you're gone, and I won't be very happy if I miss you."

You hoped that your second point would be incentive enough for your boyfriend to stay, because while he didn't care much for school, he cared for you, and by far, his least favorite thing was when you were sad, especially if he happened to be the cause of it. You could no doubt survive a day without him, but that wasn't the issue you were facing, here.

But of course, as usual, he had a solution to the would-ensue problem and countered your point straight away.

"It won't become a habit, I promise. Once every couple months, tops. But if you're afraid of missing me, I have the answer. Come with me today."

"O-Oh, baby... I don't know about that... I'd rather you just stay. I don't want to get in trouble, so I think it's best we just get to class and forget this ever came up-"

In response to that, Jess kissed you softly once again but kept your lips connected longer than they had been in the diner. When he pulled away, he smiled knowing that you were now blushing. "You won't get in trouble, sweetheart. You've never skipped school a day in your life unless Lorelai said it was okay, so it's not like this is a regular thing for you or anything. We'll have fun! I promise if you don't have more fun than you've had, let's say, this week, then I'll never ask you to ditch with me again. Deal?"

You pondered your boyfriend's proposal momentarily, analyzing his request from all angles. He certainly wasn't saying anything that wasn't true. You never **had** skipped school before when it hadn’t come with a parent’s permission, and when Jess made a promise to you, he didn't break it without a probable cause. Although this was true, you did know that ditching school was wrong and that you shouldn't do it. That's why you never had before. It surely wasn't the case that you **enjoyed** school. You simply didn't want to get in trouble for doing something that you knew was against the rules.

Then again, you didn't want to miss Jess all day. It was always nice to have him around and he **was** right. It **was** only one day of you doing the fun thing out of the thousands that you had done, and continued to do, the right thing. So, although you still had your reservations about not heading into the building, you accepted Mr. Mariano's request. After all, what was the worst that could come of it? 

"Well... okay. Let's do it."

"That's my girl," Jess grinned, taking your hand and lacing his fingers through yours.

"Yes, yes, and you didn't even have to pout." Actually, that fact was slightly disappointing. Just as Jess found your "reading face" adorable, you thought the same of his pout, and any opportunity he had to use it was an opportunity much appreciated by you, even if he was using it to manipulate you. It was a shame, at least in your opinion, that this morning was not one that presented such an opening. 

"Now come on. Let's get out of here before someone sees us. My car is right over there," he noted, nodding his head toward it.

With that, the two of you got into Jess's beat up clunker and drove off, throwing your backpack into the backseat before turning to face the right way again.

Your heart thumped in your chest and you could almost hear it as the car drove down the street, your nerves, though you hated to admit it, starting to get the best of you. You were half expecting for some authority figure to come out of the woodwork and catch you in the act of committing your offense, only to drag you into the school where you belonged and slam you with a lifetime worth of after-hours detentions. You expected Luke to have a gut feeling and decide to look out of the window, only to see his nephew's car turning the corner with not one, but **two** visible heads, then for him to tell your mom when she came into the diner before starting work for the day at the Independence Inn. She'd laugh in his face at first, but eventually placate him by going down to the school and checking whether or not you were where you were supposed to be. When she found out that you weren't, in fact, in class, she'd come looking for you. When she found Jess with you, just as Luke had said that he'd seen... Oh, she'd have a fit, **despite** the fact that she was one of the, if not **the** , coolest moms on the planet. That outburst would have consequences of its very own, ones that you weren't sure you were willing to risk. You expected for everything that could possibly go wrong to go wrong, but alas, it didn't. Well, at least not yet. 

Before you knew it, your sight took notice of the "Welcome to Stars Hollow" sign. You were leaving town.

"Would you calm down, Y/N?" Jess asked of you, looking over at you briefly only to see that you were as white as a sheet. "Seriously," he continued, reaching over with one hand and taking yours in his, intertwining your fingers together in the same way that they had een before entering the car. He rubbed the back of your hand with his thumb back and forth as he said, finishing his sentence, "Look, we're out of town. All right? Nobody will catch us. Nobody knows us here. You will **not** get in trouble, so just take a breather, would you please? It's **okay**." He had never met someone with so much aversion to skipping school. Granted, his usual group was far from Ivy League material, but even still. 

Luckily, the boy's assurances did something to calm you down, and slowly but surely, your heart's beating returned to its normal pace and you relaxed into your seat. He was right. Nobody knew you in the next town over, so, even if somebody saw you, they wouldn't figure that anything was out of place and would simply be on their way upon seeing you.

"There we go," he exhaled, holding your hand until he was sure that you were calm, then returning it next to the other on the steering wheel. He hoped that the panicking part of your brain failed to compute for the remainder of the excursion, but he would be foolish to be without his doubts. "Now, since you made the very bold choice of coming along for the ride this morning, I happen to know that there's a book fair going on in this town today. It's at a library, and everything is going for really cheap. I know how you love your bargain books, so I thought we'd spend the day there. Well, some of it anyway. As long as it takes you to be finished shopping." One thing that Jess also knew was that he could barely pull you away from a room full of books when the store and/or sale had closed, so instead of using the phrase "some time", he substituted it for "the day". Anybody that met you and spent more than five minutes with you would be given that exact same impression, given that they were put in the same situation with you. "That's why I brought my bookbag today, and that's why it's empty. You can leave whatever books that you have in yours in the car, so that way we have both bags plus whatever we can carry."

You didn't know what it was about that morning, but you seemed to be smiling a lot. When Jess told you where you were headed, you got a massive, goofy grin on your face and felt the urge to lunge at him, only to shower him with hugs and kisses. However, considering the fact that he was driving and the consequences of him crashing (including but not limited to physical injury as well as the fact that your legal guardians would find out that you weren't where you were supposed to be when you were supposed to be there, then proceed to have a cow, if not the whole damn barn), you found the willpower to refrain from attacking him just yet and simply settled for staying in your own seat to squeak.

"You are the **best**!" you squealed, bouncing up and down in your spot. "Are we really going?! Honest?! You're the BEST!" Your repeating yourself was intentional, because for this, the driver of the car deserved to hear it a million times over. No matter how many times you could say it, it'd never be enough.

One of the other many things that Jess thought made you amazing was how something so small, like picking out books at a mega sale or hearing him hum your favorite song without him realizing that he'd been doing it, could make you so happy. He loved books too, sure, but his love for them could **never** even **begin** to rival yours. Some people would say that your obsession was bordering on scary, but Jess would just tell them that he thought it was cute. 

"Yes, we're really going," he chuckled as he turned onto the street that housed the public library, the one listed on the flier that he had picked up. "Honest. And thank you. I really do try. always nice to hear my fans sing my praises." There was that sarcasm again. If you weren't so elated, it just might've kind of, sort of ruined the moment.

When you saw the large brick building, your eyes went as wide as saucers and you pointed it out so he wouldn't miss it. It wasn't like he would, of course. Not on purpose, anyway. But you wanted to make certain that he didn't miss it by accident. "Jess! Jess! There it is! Is it that one?! There it **is**!"

"Yeah, I see it," Jess laughed, pulling into the parking lot of the library and backing into a spot. This calmed your enthusiasm down a bit, as now you knew for sure that he wasn't going to pass the structure by. There was no doubt, though, that you could afford a dip in volume (both verbal and physical). You probably had enough to last a week. 

"All right," the brown-eyed boy said as he turned the key in the ignition, thus shutting off the car, before removing it. "The sale isn't starting for another ten minutes, but the library is open, so we can go in now." The boy wasn't going to add an _if you want to_ at the end of his sentence because he already knew that yes, you most definitely **did** want to enter the library full of **books**.

While uttering those words, in your book and the book of anybody who knew you well enough, granted you permission to race inside **now** , and while that was usually what happened, it wasn't what happened that day. This time, when you and Jess were both out of the car, you ran around on his side of the car to wrap him in a tight embrace.

"The **best**!" you reiterated, squeezing him solidly, pulling away only ever so slightly so that you could beam at him, your death grip not loosening one bit.  

"See? You're having fun already and we haven't even gone in yet," was his response as he hugged you back.

It was then that you were reminded of what day and time you were at this library, in this town that was not your own, where you were not supposed to be. You were reminded that, yes, even though you were now outside of Stars Hollow and a good amount of minutes away from Stars Hollow High, there was still the possibility that the second scenario you had thought up while pulling out onto the street could very well happen. Even though you were now in a different town in a place where nobody knew you, where not a soul beside the boy next to you would recognize your face if they saw it, there was still a very real possibility that Luke **had** looked out of the diner window and seen the car pull off. After all, even though you had been keeping him in check in terms of his education for the past half of a year, Jess still was Jess, and Luke knew better than to be a fool and assume that his relative was always doing the right thing when he wasn't looking. Hell, Jess sometimes didn't do the right thing when his uncle **was** looking. It was still a plausible theory that he had told your mother and that she had checked with the administration office on your attendance, or lack thereof, that morning, and she very well could be getting in her Jeep and coming to look for you **right now**.

As your panic returned, you hugged Jess tighter and stared back at him, your pupils blown wide. "What if my mom comes looking for me?!" you questioned frantically, then changing your mind on a more firm grip and instead trying to eliminate the one you currently had before running back to the car so that you could get him to drive it back to town. Maybe if you were just late, it wouldn't be a problem. After all, tardiness was less of an offense than sipping out completely without permission, right? **Right**?!

However, Jess simply held you tight, close to him. Although the two of you were alike in so many ways, in your music taste, your love of paper-bound pages of all kinds, and your adoration for each **other** , to name a few, one of your major differences was the fact that you were a rule follower and Jess, well, **wasn’t**. He had no problem with doing things that he knew were wrong, while you had every single reservation that there was to have about it. It was just one of your hang-ups, but it was one that he didn't mind dealing with. Jess knew that there would be some issues that would arise with skipping that involved your anxiety about the situation, so it wasn't unexpected that he would need to reassure you throughout the day. His mind was even telling him such on the way over here when the  **last** one ended.

"Lorelai will not come looking for you," he said, smoothing your hair back. "She won't come looking for you, which means she won't be finding you."

"But what if she does?!" you asked before beginning to explain your, previously strictly internal, second theory to him. "What if Luke saw us drive off and when my mom came in for coffee, he told her and she went to check the administration office to make sure and now she's coming to look for me because I'm not at school?!"

You were clearly working yourself into a frenzy, and if Jess didn't do something to calm you down soon, he was almost sure that you'd start to hyperventilate.

"Y/N, Luke was **not** looking. If he had been looking, it would've been right when we left. You know what he would have seen? He would have seen us walking to the school, and because you were walking with me, he would've said 'okay' and went back to work. Even if he had seen us, you won't get in trouble with Lorelai. She'll blame it on me because she knows that you're a good kid. As a matter of fact, if he had seen us, all he would have had to do is run across the street and drag us into the building himself. That didn't happen, did it? Everything will work out."

Even though Jess looked so sure of himself and his response, it did nothing to ease your mind. If anything, it made you panic even more, especially because you knew that he was right. Your mother wasn't very fond of your boyfriend. She thought that he was a bad influence on you. She **would** blame it on him, and you couldn't have that. You knew that it wouldn't go well, and with those words, your mind automatically went to the worst case scenario.

"Oh my god. Jess, what if she **does** find out? You're right. She'll blame it on you! I don't want to break up, Jess. I don't want to have to do that, so we have to get back to town right now. I want to stay together."

"Woah, woah. Y/N, babe. Calm down. You're going a bit overboard there. Who said anything about us breaking up? That won't happen."

"Yes it will! She'll find out we ditched, and she'll blame it on you, and she'll make us break up!"

In response to this, Jess gently began to rub your back in circles and guided your head to lie on his shoulder with use of his free hand. God, if anybody from town saw him doing this, his reputation would be trashed. 

"Listen to me. Nobody but us can make that decision. Not Lorelai, not Luke, not your dad... **Nobody**. Nobody but us. I won't let it happen. You have to trust me on this. We will not be breaking up because anybody but us says so. I **swear**. Now please chill out, hm? I hate seeing you like this." That was the most important reason, but Jess also didn't want attention to be attracted by your shouting. It wasn't that anybody in this town could do anything about the fact that you had skipped out on school, anyway, but he'd just rather the day went as smoothly as possible. "Just calm down," he whispered. "Everything's fine. He **didn't** see us, remember?"

Although you were still extremely apprehensive, you took a deep breath in, held it, then released it and repeated the pattern a couple of times before relaxing against Jess's body. You wanted to be calm for him, even if you were still worried about being caught. After all, he had made the effort to get you to a place where you could do something that you liked, even if it **was** a school day.

Once you had stopped shaking, you pulled away from Jess, but linked arms with him to stay close. "Okay. I'm good. Let's get inside the library before I change my mind again, yeah?" you chuckled, trying to joke in order to lighten the mood and make yourself feel a little bit better. It might bot work, but it could never hurt to attempt it. 

"Let's," Jess grinned, leading you around to the building.

Slowly, you and he ascended the brink steps until you reached the top of the set, being faced with the door. Carefully, you turned the chilly silver doorknob and pressed the piece of wood separating the outside of the building from the inside open.

When you entered the library, you were faced with your dream: You were now standing in a massive structure full of books of every type and they were selling for extremely cheap. This was **Heaven**!

"All right, I'm setting you loose," Jess laughed, pulling his arm away from yours. "If you have so much that you can't carry it anymore, bring it up to the front desk and have them hold it under my name. I'll meet up with you in a little bit. Gonna go browse."

Once you had given your boyfriend another kiss and told him, once again, how wonderful he was, you all but skipped off to look for some books.

While Jess went to look for selections of poetry and classic American literature, you were off in search of fantasy novels. Each table in the library held stacks upon stacks of novels and was labeled by genre, so neither you nor your companion had any trouble locating what you needed.

When you found the set of tables that was labeled 'fantasy', a smile found its way onto your face and you stood in front of the nearest one. There, you found classic novels, such as ones from the _Chronicles of Narnia_ series by C.S. Lewis, or the _Lord of the Rings_ series by J.R.R. Tolkien. To your surprise, you realized that you, somehow, hadn't had the opportunity to read either yet, and so, you grabbed the total of ten books. The covers of each were slightly worn, but to you, that was the sign of a good book. The more worn the cover, the more people have read it, and so the better it must be.

Not long after that, you came across _Tuck Everlasting_ by Natalie Babbitt, a children's fantasy novel dealing with immortality and its desirability, or lack thereof. With the addition of it to your pile, you, of course, were still far from done and continued browsing.

Jess, on the other hand, had finished more quickly. He had come prepared with a list of books that he wanted to pick up, and stuck to that list for the most part, only picking out one or two impulse choices. After leaving his books to be held at the front desk, he came to find you and, not to his surprise, you were where he expected you to be: in the fantasy section.

While you were reading the back cover of a lesser known novel, you felt familiar arms wrap around your waist, and an even more familiar face's chin rest on your shoulder. "Hey there, cutie," Jess murmured in your ear.

"Hey," you greeted softly in return, turning around to face the seventeen year old and drape your arms around his neck. When you saw his face, your already present beam brightened even more.

"Find anything you want to get so far?" The answer to that question was one that the teenager already knew, but he asked anyway, just to see if he could get you excited.

"Yeah, it's that pile on the floor down there," you informed him, looking over it and nodding to it with your head. "So far, I'm up to thirteen. Where are your books? Don't tell me you came up empty-handed. That’s **impossible** here."

"Ah, no," Jess told you, shaking his head. "I left mine at checkout. Finished looking, so I thought I'd come to help you look... that is, if you need any help."

In response to this, you nodded and pulled him over to another table. "I'd love some. I already have a lot of the books in this section, but nothing on this table. If you could give me your take on some of these, that'd be great."

You and Jess often shared books, because while fantasy was your **favorite** genre, it wasn't the only one that you enjoyed. It had become a habit of your boyfriend's, although he didn't appreciate most fantasy novels with as much vigor as you did, to read your favorites and ones that you recommended. That way, he could understand what you were talking about when you went on one of your darling little rants after finishing one, and so that he could actually add something to the conversation instead of it simply being one sided with him not doing much more than listening and providing empty agreements on the opinions that you held. As a result of this, it had also become a habit of **yours** when you and Jess went to go pick out books together that you ask his opinion of some of them, just so he had something that he'd enjoy reading if he picked it up on his own accord, without prompting from you.

Jess spent about ten minutes thumbing through the books set out in front of him before he made his choice of a pair, having looked for elements that he enjoyed, but that you would also like. This was a rather simple task due to your similar tastes, but he spent some extra time making sure that his selections were just right anyway.

Once the black-haired boy had finished choosing, he took those two books plus your pile and gathered it all in his arms. "All right, let's head to check out."

Of course, you tried to offer your help, even saying that you'd take half of the stack off of his hands, but he refused. You weren't sure if he was being sweet, trying to show off, or a combination of both. Either way, you couldn't argue with what was, at the surface, chivalry. 

At the checkout counter and after reaching the front of the line, he placed the books in front of the woman working it before stating that he was Jess Mariano and requesting that the other books left there under his name be scanned as well.

As everything was being rung up, you just stood there and watched, grinning like an absolute dork as each book's barcode was read and processed into the total, the amount you were due to pay increasing with each swipe. Each book, as Jess had told you, was going super inexpensively, and when all of your selections had been run through the system, your total only came out to about twenty dollars.

As soon as the final amount was displayed, Jess pulled out his wallet and gave the cashier twenty-one dollars, taking the nickel, dime, and penny she gave him in return before slipping everything back into the left rear pocket of his jeans. You **would** offer to pay him back half of the tab once you got back into town but knew that he would just refuse you and probably say that you skipping school with him was payment enough.

After he paid, Jess stuffed all of your purchases into his completely empty bookbag and slung it over his shoulder once again. Huh. You hadn’t needed both of the packs after all, which was a miracle in and of itself. You had never really looked at it, but the inside of that thing must've been **really** spacious. "Okay, babe. Let's hit the road."

With that, you followed the boy out of the library and descended the stairs. When you got to the bottom, you once again reminded him for the next, but certainly not last, time that day, "You're the best."

In response to your compliment, Jess said something to you that seemed to slow time. It made the world stop dead in its tracks, pausing for everything but the moment that you were experiencing for the first time ever. It made it feel like you were the only two people in that town, in that state, in that world. It caused butterflies in your stomach, and for your cheeks to go as red as beets. It made your heart thump against your chest and race at a million miles a minute, unlike it had earlier in the sense that this time, it was for a reason that made you feel as if you were on cloud nine. It made you weak in the knees and lightheaded with happiness. But most importantly, it made skipping school and breaking the rules seem like no big deal, like getting a score of ninety-nine and a half instead of a perfect one hundred on an exam. Although you knew that ditching was wrong and that you shouldn't do it, that didn't matter to you in that moment, because Jess's words made your entire universe glow. They made it **worth it**.   

"I know. And I love you."


	2. Chapter 2

You laid on the couch in your living room, one leg on the seat cushions and one leg slung over the back of the couch. It was completely dark in the house except for the glow of the television screen, and it was quiet except for the chatter of the characters of " _Boy Meets World.”_ Alone in the house, you had decided to watch reruns of the nineteen ninety-three coming of age series on the American Broadcasting Channel.

You had been by yourself in the house for upwards of two and a half hours by that point, your mother, Lorelai, and your sister, Rory, having left at six o'clock so that they could make their way to Hartford. They had been doing so for the past six weeks in order to attend weekly Friday night dinners with your grandparents, Richard and Emily, these gatherings only recently having come to fruition as a condition of a loan that Lorelai took out with her parents in order to pay for Rory's private schooling at Chilton Academy. As Emily had said when your mother asked for the loan, in her true fashion, " _Since we are now financially involved in your life, I want to be actively involved in your life_ ," and so came the newfound tradition of the Friday night dinners.

While seven weeks previously, the pair could have said that they only saw the Hartford Gilmores on major holidays such as Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, they now were able to boast that they saw them every seven days precisely. Although Lorelai was not pleased with this particular condition of the loan when it was laid out (and, if she was being entirely rank, still wasn’t), she was willing as long as it was for her daughter’s better good.

You, however, did not attend these dinners.

While your sister had started to become closer to your grandparents, you still held the same opinion of them that your mother did, and did not care at all to associate with them in times when it was not absolutely necessary. They tried to put on a façade for you and your sibling. They tried to put on the act of "warm and fuzzy Richard and Emily", as Lorelai referred to it. But you saw the way that they treated your mother. You saw how callous they were with her, how poorly they acted toward her, and you couldn’t be blamed for hating it.

Your sister, though she was sympathetic to your mother’s plight with her parents, was a keeper of the peace and never really stuck up for her as she deserved. While you tried to refrain from too many outbursts for the sake of being respectful to keep Lorelai’s remaining sanity intact, you had no qualms about acting like what Richard and Emily perceived as a brat when they offended or hurt her feelings. This did not, in any way, win you points with them, but you were long past being upset about that.

You often acted as a sounding board, a person that Lorelai could vent her frustrations to. Rory always tried to play devil's advocate, or to see the bright side in the situation.

You didn't try to keep the peace as your twin did. You simply allowed your mother to tell you everything that had happened, and then you responded with examples of times that they had done the exact thing in order to remind her that, firstly, they had always been that way, and secondly, that it would take a miracle from God himself to get them to change.

Most of your examples, though, came from stories that Lorelai had told you in the past (the others a product of holiday dinners.) You had never once attended any of the five Friday night dinners that had come to pass, and you, obviously, had opted not to attend tonight’s gathering, either. After all, why **should** you go? It wasn't **your** education that they were funding.

Your not attending Chilton wasn’t to say that you weren’t every bit as smart as your sister and that you couldn’t have gone if you really wanted to. You **absolutely** had the opportunity, but there were three reasons why you didn't tag along with her: First of all, you didn't exactly _enjoy_ school. You were unhappy with the fact that you had to attend even your town’s average public high school. You couldn't even begin to imagine being tasked with completing Chilton Academy's rigorous workload. Secondly, if you attended the same school as your sibling, you would see your boyfriend considerably less, not only due to the extra homework but also because he'd still be attending Stars Hollow High. The third and chief reason, though, was because you didn't want to spend a minute of your life in debt to Emily and Richard unless there was no way out of or around it. A private school was _not_ an absolute necessity. Besides, who **wouldn't** want their Friday nights free?

While you had no planned standard activity, the evenings that Lorelai and Rory had to spend at the Gilmore mansion always went the same way:

At five thirty, your already dressed sister would drag your mother off of the couch and up to her room to get changed. Lorelai would whine and complain the entire time, and Rory would have to stand in the room with her to make sure that the outfit that she picked to wear was appropriate (and that she actually put it on), sometimes even picking it for her.

At five forty-five, your housemates would emerge from the upper level, prepared to leave. Lorelai's outfit would be suitable attire for the dinner and she'd look gorgeous, but her face wouldn't be without a pout.

At five fifty, your mother would remind you to call if you needed anything, especially if it was an emergency. She'd also say that they'd be back by nine at the latest, but that they'd let you know if they got held up and would be later than that (and half-joke about calling the police if they were gone past midnight without giving notice). This would be accompanied by a trademark comment of hers, something about the possibilities of why they might be late, such as Emily's true monstrous form coming out to wreak havoc and Lorelai and Rory being detained to speak to the authorities about carnage, or being held hostage until Lorelai conceded on some arbitrary wrongdoing of hers.

At five fifty-five, she'd take out her wallet and hand you money for dinner, which never failed to be pizza (although she typically gave you more than enough for anything else you may want.) Well, except the night that Jess had come over with food from Luke's, but that was a one-time thing, or at least it had been so far. Even that night, you had pizza, come to think of it. She had given you money that night, too. It was just that you had ordered it before your boyfriend made his appearance, so you had eaten both.

After being given the currency, you'd hug your twin and your mother would kiss your forehead before each bidding you goodbye.

At six sharp, you heard the sound of your front door clicking shut. The pair would climb into your mother's Jeep after coming down off of the porch, and then they'd pull out onto the road and, with that, officially be Hartford-bound. With that, you'd be left to your own devices until they returned, free to do anything you wanted (which, though there was nothing set in stone, would usually be reading a book or watching a show or movie).

You were now on your fifth episode of your show; the channel was running a marathon, and you hadn't missed a second of it. It was one of your favorites and you wouldn’t dare even blink intentionally.  

When the show turned to a commercial, you reached over and grabbed a slice of plain cheese pizza from the box that lay open on the coffee table in front of you. You had perfected your position so that you could reach the box without having to sit up but could still see the television at a good angle, and you were grateful that you had, because you were way too comfortable to move.

Just as you got the slice halfway into your mouth, you heard the front door, which had been left unlocked, open. However, you stayed right where you were and remained calm. You didn't assume the worst, thinking that it was a burglar or a murderer entering the home. You didn't live alone, so you just assumed that it was your two co-inhibitors returning from their evening out. It had to be. For one, it was almost nine o'clock, so it was right around the time that they had said that they’d be back. For another, as soon as the door closed, you heard an overly dramatic, "Oh, home sweet home! How I've missed you!" enter your ears. Yep. That was **definitely** your mother.

"Hey guys!" you called out to them from the furniture that you were sprawled out on, a smile finding its way to your face. Though you enjoyed the time that you got to yourself that the beginning of the evening, it was always **too** quiet on Fridays when you were alone, and you missed the life that was brought to the house when you weren't the only one in it, always grateful when the hustle and bustle returned.

"Daughter? Is that you? Oh, my lovely daughter!" Lorelai called back as she hung her jacket up. "The one I've longed to meet again!"

The next sight that you were faced with was that of Lorelai and Rory entering the room. Granted, you saw them upside down due to the way that you were looking into the foyer, but it was them all the same.

"She's yours for the rest of the night," your sister informed you flatly, obviously having had her fix of being a hander for the night. "I dealt with this kind of foolishness the entire time at Grandma and Grandpa's. It's your turn."

"That's fair," you laughed, reaching for the remote and turning the television down.

"I'm going to go get changed and get a jump start on some of my weekend homework," Rory informed you. "I'll be in my room if you need me."

With that, you watched as Rory exited the living room to turn down the hallway and go to her room. That left you and your mother alone in the living room.

You next felt your leg being carefully lifted up off of the couch, and Lorelai sliding onto the cushion only to place said leg on her lap. Lastly, she shot a goofy smile at you and you gave her one in return, obviously happy that she was home.

"Hey, feel like sparing a slice of that pizza for your lovely mother?" she asked curiously.

"Go for it," you laughed. "You don't have to ask. You were the one that paid for it."

Lorelai smiled and grabbed a slice, folding it in half lengthwise before taking a bite out of it. As she did this, you were getting down to the crust of your own slice. Though you’d be stoned in olden times for such an unpopular opinion, the crust was your favorite part. The pizza place always did such a good job of making it just the right way.

Once you swallowed the bite that you had in your mouth, you looked at Lorelai and asked, "So how was dinner?"

Your mother was quiet for a moment before she answered your question. She had spent the entire ride home trying to think of a way to break the news that she had to you. She knew that no matter how she put it, you wouldn't take it well, but she still wanted to put it as delicately and as calmly as possible and hope for the best. All she could _do_ was hope that you would follow her lead and remain rational, but she certainly didn't expect it. Lorelai still hadn't decided how to tell you, though, so what she did choose to do was run down the other major event of the evening before saying anything else.

"Well, your grandmother had your sister and I, after dinner, go around the house and put Post-It notes on everything that we wanted to be left in their will for us."

"Morbid," you replied simply. Morbid, yes, but also not out of the realm of reality of things that she would say.

"That's what I thought!" the woman exclaimed, finishing off her slice of pizza and wiping her hand off on one of the nearby napkins that rested on the coffee table.

"Weird that they don't do this at Thanksgiving or something when I'll be there, hm? They must really not like the fact that I don't show up to leave me out of their will.  I mean, not like I want any of their stuff anyway, but even still. I don't think they ever liked me anyway. Rory's the one they like."

Lorelai sighed at this, beginning to run her hand up and down your calf, rubbing it. Although she enjoyed the fact that you held a disdain for them as she did, and that because of that she could vent to you whenever something happened and you wouldn't try to give her bright sides, she didn't like the fact that you thought that they didn't hold you in importance. She never wanted you to feel unimportant, regardless of who caused the feeling.

"Babe, of course they like you. Of course they do. They probably think you’re a bit bratty because of the times you stick up for me, but they love you. It's just... circumstantial. They spend more time with Rory because of the loan, but they love to see you on holidays even if you have a mouth on you. Besides, they're not leaving you out of the will. They gave us a third color of Post-It to tag things that you might like."

"You don't have to try to make me feel better, mom. There's nothing to fix. I'm more like you than Rory is, plain and simple. They like Rory because she fits really nicely into their little world, or she would if given the chance. We wouldn't. Hell, you **didn't** . But that's okay to me. I don't need **everybody** to love me. It's fine, really. I promise. Sorry for bringing it up out of the blue like that. It was just a passing comment, not anything to get concerned about. Now, what else happened?"

Lorelai knew that she couldn’t argue against anything that you were saying and win. It was all one hundred percent true. Not a word of it could be properly disputed.

After all, you were nothing if not your mother’s daughter. You were loud, witty, and easily excitable. You had an edge to you, but always took the side of ones that you loved when they were in trouble. You were considerate and thoughtful, but did not allow anybody to use you as a doormat. The list could go on and on for miles. You were so many things that your mother was and enjoyed that you were, but still managed to be your own unique person at the same time. Sometimes she felt as if you and she were more twins than you and Rory were, but other times, she was amazed that you were even part of a pair at all. With enough similarities to your immediate family to be recognized as a true Gilmore, but not too many such as to strip you of your individuality, **you** were perfect just the way you were, regardless of whether or not your grandparents realized it.  

But once again, instead of listening to her mind that was screaming to tell you the biggest news of the night and just get it over with, Lorelai still didn’t break it to you. She hadn’t thought of how to put it. Even if she had, though, she still wouldn’t be sure about telling you that your sixteenth birthday would be spent not at home with your friends, family, and the love of your teenaged life, but rather at a stuffy gathering thrown together by your cold, unfeeling grandparents. She just wanted a few more **good** minutes with you before you either went ballistic, felt like your heart was being ripped from your chest while the world was both simultaneously exploding and imploding, or both. She wanted you to be happy for just a few minutes more.  

So, as opposed to what every fiber of her being was begging her to just _say_ already, the dark-haired woman blurted, “They served pudding for dessert.”

Those words strung together in the context that they were was so absurd that you, without even thinking about it, burst out laughing. Oh, what a lovely laugh. Lorelai’d miss it while it was gone.

“They **what**?!” you cackled, sitting up from your current position on the couch only to ensure that you didn’t fall off of it because you were giggling so hard. After all, the statement was probably one of the top five most ridiculous things you had heard in your entire life. Emily and Richard **Gilmore** serving pudding at dinner? When pigs fly! “Mom, were you diagnosed with some life-threatening disease that you only told them about and not Rory or me because that’s the only reason they’d serve **pudding**. Only if you had like six months left to live would they think to serve anything you actually enjoy.”

“Trust me, girly, if I was diagnosed with a life-threatening disease, you and your sister would be the first people to know. Your grandparents would be hearing it through the grapevine. If they knew, they’d probably just guilt me for inconveniencing **them** with my death.”

“That sounds like them,” you agreed, though you were still giggling. “So if it’s not cancer or something of the sort, why are they serving pudding? Pudding! Did she,” -she being Emily- “tell you?”

The answer to that was a ‘no’, but Lorelai had a pretty educated guess about the reason that the “hospital food” had been sitting in front of her and her daughter in crystal bowls. It was likely because of the fact that Emily was planning on giving the party and figured that if her daughter and grandchild were softened by food they enjoyed, they wouldn’t be so angry. However, the fact that Emily didn’t actually state that as an outright, plain truth to Lorelai gave her a loophole and allowed her to respond, “Nope. It was so weird though.”

Your laughter must have gone on for a good two or three minutes more. Every time you thought you were done, it’d just come back after a beat. But by the time your fit actually ended, you were out of breath and red in the face. Still, you managed to wheeze out more words in order to continue the conversation.

“Well, that’s totally enough weird to sustain me for at least another month, but I have to ask, did anything else happen?” you asked, your mouth still formed into the shape of a massive, face-splitting grin.

Oh no. Please no. God no. Lorelai had only brought three pieces of news worth mentioning home, and she had already gone through the two that wouldn’t cause emotional distress (well, the first one was a harsh reminder of the state of your relationship with Richard and Emily, but that was beside the point). She _still_ hadn’t formed a coherent explanation that held even the slightest semblance of possibly keeping you calm.

What she had wasn’t good enough, but she knew that she would have to make do with it. She couldn’t stall any longer.

At least once it was out there, it wouldn’t be weighing down her chest like a set of cinderblocks. At least once she told you, it meant that the whole ordeal was one step closer to being over and done with.

“One more thing,” the woman admitted, forcing herself to look you in the eyes. There was no backing out now, so she might as well go all the way. “But you have to promise to try your best not to get too worked up.” She, of course, wasn’t going to ask that you had no emotion at all. There was a time and a place for getting angry and, if anything, it was at the current moment. She couldn’t expect anything less, so it wouldn’t be a fair thing for her to request.

Those words brought a sinking feeling to your stomach and made your mind start to run at a million miles an hour. What did she have to preface with **that**? What was so bad? Was this the reason why Emily served pudding at dinner? What was going on? For all you knew, it could be anything!

You didn’t even know what your mother meant by “worked up”. Did she mean too excited (which was about as likely as Hell freezing over)? Too sad? Too angry? You had to know!

“What do you mean I have to promise to try my best not to get too worked up? What’s wrong?” It was best to find out immediately from the source rather than wait and let your thoughts run wild with possibilities.

“I just need you to promise me. Not to not get worked up, but to **try** not to. Just to try. Please, babe. Promise me.”

You sighed at this, just needing to hear what she had to say right then and there. The led ball in your gut seemed to be growing exponentially, and you wanted it to start shrinking at the soonest available chance it could get.

So, despite the fact that you knew that the only possible news could be coming was bad news and you didn’t want it to ruin your night, you quietly agreed, “Okay. I promise to **try**.”

Taking a deep breath of air, Lorelai nodded and tried not to trip over her words as she let them escape in a rush. “Your grandmother won’t give us Friday. She’s throwing a party for your birthday, and I couldn’t get us out of it.”

Though you had just been asked and had just promised to try not to, as you now knew, get too angry, at the sentences coming from your mother’s mouth, you felt your blood begin to boil inside of your body.

“That’s not fair!” you exclaimed, your facial features contorting in a way that showed your obvious displeasure as though Lorelai couldn’t hear it in your voice already. “Doesn’t she understand that maybe I wanted to spend my birthday with you guys?!”

How could Emily do that?! Just because your birthday happened to fall on **her** day doesn’t mean that you wanted it to be an event you spent with your twin and parent any less!

“That’s the thing, love. It’s not just Rory’s birthday, which means it’s not just Rory’s party. It’s yours too. You’re expected… Excuse me. They expect you to be there with us.”

Somehow, the thought of spending the day with the ones that you loved but at the Hartford Manor upset you more than the thought of not spending it with them at all. It was bad enough that you had to spend all of the major holidays with them. Why did you have to add in a day that was very special to you, a **sacred** day, to the mix? How could she expect that you give that one up too? The banks didn’t even close for it!

“No chance!” you shouted in response, your cheeks growing hot with fury and your fists balling involuntary. Though you would never even dream of hitting your mother, or anybody else for that matter, with any seriousness, it was an involuntary reaction that came when you were frustrated enough nonetheless. “I’m not going! She can’t make me do that! She can’t make me do anything! That’s our day, **my** day! She can’t ruin that!”

While the words coming from your mouth were not unlike those of a petulant six year old and not at all a reflection of the lovely, mature young woman you were becoming, Lorelai understood why you spoke them and where they were coming from. They were not only from a place of anger, but also from ones of frustration, sadness, and even heartbreak. Your sixteenth birthday, the birthday that you had been looking forward to since you were a little girl, was not going to work out the way you always dreamt it would. While you were mad, she knew that you were also crushed beyond belief.

“Sweetheart, just take a deep breath,” Lorelai instructed, gently taking your hands before slowly inhaling and exhaling in order to show you what she wanted you to mimic. “I know it is. I know it’s your day. I know it is, and your grandmother is the absolute worst for stealing it from you. But we just have to… we just have to take it in stride and then move on, okay? It’s one of those things.”

“Did she stop to even consider for one minute that we had other plans?! That **I** wanted to do something, **anything** other than spending the night with her?!” you continued to shout, ignoring your mother’s wishes for a gradual intake of oxygen and the calming of nerves. “I wanted to be here! I wanted to have the Stars Hollow party with **Jess** and **Dean** and **Luke** and all of our friends! Rory wanted that too! Why can’t Emily just… It’s **our** day!”

“It is your day,” Lorelai echoed level-headedly, simply holding your hands tighter when you attempted to take them back for yourself. “It is your day, baby girl, and we will have the Stars Hollow party. We will have the Stars Hollow party with Jess, Dean, Luke, and all of our friends, just like you and your sister want. We will. It’ll just be on Saturday instead. But we’ll still have it, I promise. Just because we have to be in Hartford for Friday does not make what you want any less valid.” Lorelai was careful not to voice her opinion on the matter, which was that it was completely out of line and unkind (to say the least) for Emily to require that of Rory and herself, to require that of you. She knew that all that that would do was add fuel to an already raging fire, and that wasn’t in the best interest of the situation. So, keeping her thoughts to herself, **she** was the peacemaker of tonight.

While you were glad that you didn’t have to give up your party completely to appease Emily, you were still frustrated that you had to make accommodations in the first place. “We shouldn’t have to move it at all!” you exclaimed, your facial features scrunching even more tightly, if possible. “She should move **her** party to Saturday. It’s not like it’s her birthday!”

Your mother nodded in agreement at this, again only sending back what you had stated in minimally different phrasing, her tone of voice still as soft, soothing, and understanding as ever. “It’s not her day, that’s right. It’s your day, and it’s Rory’s day, and that’s it. She should have had the courtesy to move her party to Saturday, but she didn’t, because that’s the way she is. Babe, we can’t change her. She’s set in her ways. But what we can do is roll with the punches with smiles on our faces, or at the very least neutral expressions, and get it over with without incident. The best we can do is not make the situation worse. So, let’s try to do that. Let’s go to Hartford, and let’s put smiles on our faces, and let’s move on with our lives afterward without any more trouble than the inconvenience of being there, because we know that we can do our own thing tomorrow and it will all be fine. Everybody will still be here for you guys when we get back, I swear.”

It was then that you were sure that you wouldn’t be able to properly vent to your mother at the current moment in time. If you continued to attempt it, she was only going to respond to you with words that told you that she didn’t want to go on the offense against her mother’s actions, even in the comfort of her own home. Nothing that you said would be satisfied by an equally as angry response, at least not from Lorelai. If even **she** wasn’t going to complain about them with you, you knew that there was only one other person that you could turn to to get that relief: Jess.

“I have to go to the diner,” you growled, though you tried your best to make it sound like your mother wasn’t the one that you were mad at. This was true. She hadn’t done anything wrong. But she was right there and you were angry and there was no way that you weren’t going to show it.

Luckily, Lorelai understood that the growl was not directed at her and was willing to grant you permission to leave. She knew that you were way past upset and had crossed the line of furious miles before. You needed time to cool off. Besides, it was a small town where everybody knew everybody and nobody would dare lay a finger on you. None of them had the malice. Lastly, she knew exactly where you were going to be and who you were going to be with. It was every mother’s dream to feel as secure as she did when her child went out. For these reasons, she was able to respond to you by saying, “All right, no problem. Just be sure to call me if you decide to stay over.” Granted, Lorelai was rightfully wary of Jess’s type, but she knew that but Luke was also going to be there. She trusted Luke and knew that he wouldn’t let anything that wasn’t above board happen. If staying over there and getting some extra time to herself away from anybody else that held the Gilmore name ended up being what her daughter needed, then so be it.

With that, you removed your leg from your mother’s lap and stood before exiting- okay, storming out of the house, shutting the door loudly behind you, your favorite show forgotton on the still-running television. You failed to bother to grab anything to take with you on the way out; everything you could possibly need would be at Luke’s.

It was dark when you stepped out, but you barely noticed as you stomped along under the cover of night. Usually, you would stop to admire the shining stars that blanketed the town, amazed simply by their beauty and the way that they perfectly illuminated the trees, water, and Earth below, but not tonight. You were too worked up to appreciate nature and all of its gifts right at the moment. The only thing on your mind was getting to Jess so that you could let out your anger and really be **heard**.

Since it was late by your sleepy town’s standards, barely anybody, if there was someone at all, was milling around, and certainly nobody stopped you while you were on your path. You weren’t sure if anybody would have even if they had seen you; you weren’t very approachable when you were fuming. But then again, who was?

You were, from what you could see, the only one on the streets, which was to your benefit; there was nobody to walk around, nobody to get in your way. Nobody who you liked that you’d unintentionally plow down in your rage. Because of this fact paired with your admittedly speedy pace, you made it to Luke’s Diner faster than you ever had (even faster than in times that he had promised you a stack of chocolate chip pancakes so tall that it would go up to your neck).  

When you arrived at your destination, you were just about ready to break the door down upon finding that it had been locked. It wasn’t as if you didn’t know that it would be, because it had been locked at closing time every night for as long as you could remember, but that didn’t mean that the fact that you couldn’t open it when you needed to displeased you any less.

Thankfully, though, before you had the chance to try to smash the glass with your bare fist, your boyfriend made his way down the stairs and opened it for you. Lorelai had had the sense to call Jess as soon as you left to let him know that you would be on your way so that there was no property damage and Stars Hollow residents did not complain of the noise that you caused while attempting to break in. She told him that you were coming and to be prepared because you were angry, but failed to tell him why. She was sure that you would do a perfectly fine job of that once you found your way to him and she didn’t want to hold him up on the phone any longer than she had to.

The second that the door was open, you practically tripped over yourself to get inside the diner, now red-faced, your fists balled up so tightly that your knuckles were white. If Jess hadn’t known better, he would have made a crack about how you were cute when angry, but he knew only to do that when you were the pouty, "he won't give me my book back" kind of angry. He would never dare when you were the kind of angry that came with murderous thoughts.

So, instead, he took hold of your hands before you could get too far, doing his best to still you. This was nothing short of challenging considering the fact that the last thing you wanted was to be detained, but he somehow managed regardless.

“Hey, hey,” he called, his voice smooth and gentle. He put in his best effort to make it calming for the moment until he knew what had happened and he could be angry with you. He had been around long enough to know that matching your emotion was the best course of action, but there was no way that he was going to draw information out of you if he took that attitude from the very beginning. “What happened? Talk to me. Why are you so angry?”

“She always does this!” you exclaimed, jumping right in. “She always makes her damn plans without any regard for anybody else and then still expects them all to follow what she set down as law! She doesn’t care if people had other plans or things to do or **anything** ! She just says jump and expects them to ask how **fucking** high! I’m so tired of it! It’s **my** day and I can’t **believe** she thinks she can just swoop in and take it away! No wonder her own daughter couldn’t wait to get away from her! No wonder it’s a fight to even get Lorelai to holidays! Nobody wants to be around her because she’s so **awful**!”

From certain context clues such as your third to last sentence and what he had learned about her in the time that he had known you and your family, Jess could infer that you were speaking of your grandmother, and he knew that she had ruined some event or another that was important to you, but he couldn’t pinpoint just which one that was. He didn’t know enough for that due to the scattered nature of your rant.

“Emily? I agree. She is. She’s the worst,” he confirmed, beginning to show signs of standing behind you as he had planned. “It’s ridiculous how she treats people,” he continued, rubbing the backs of your hands reassuringly with the pads of his thumbs. “What did she do this time, hm? What day is she taking away?” Though he didn’t know for sure, the boy had a feeling that the day that you were referring to was October 8th, your birthday, but he hoped that he was wrong. That would be a new low for Mrs. Gilmore (at least in his experience according to what he had heard), and he knew that you had been looking forward to that day for a forever.

Unfortunately, with your next words, his feeling was confirmed and he couldn’t help but become **genuinely** irate, not just so to placate you. How could she take something like a sixteenth birthday and make it all about her, especially when her own sweet sixteen had clearly passed many, **many** years before? There had to be a limit on how many times she could pull things like this!

“It’s insane!” you continued, your voice increasing in volume with each word. It completely escaped your mind that your boyfriend’s uncle was asleep just upstairs, that he had an early morning the next day, and that you were likely to wake him if you continued being loud or got any louder. Jess, though he knew this and had a clear enough head to remember at that moment, couldn’t bring himself to remind you of it. He feared that it would just add fuel to the fire (although, he had to say that under normal circumstances, you were the most polite, well-mannered person he had ever dated or even known and you would be horrified that you had managed to cause such a disturbance). “We had plans! We were going to have a party at home! It was going to be small and fun and people **we** wanted, not her stuffy society friends! I hate those people and the last day I should have to see them is **my** birthday!”

The meant to be comforting motion of Jess’s fingers was doing absolutely nothing to calm you down, and he could tell that it wasn’t going to have that effect any time soon, so he made the decision to let your hands go. Hopefully, it would pay off as opposed to him regretting it.

This freedom, naturally, left you to pace - stomp, really- around to let off energy as you ran your mouth.

“It is insane!” the boy echoed, a slight growl to his tone to show you that he was on your side. Hopefully, the more he agreed, the quicker you would finish and the faster the space would be quiet again. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about your feelings, it was just that it was late and you could wake up the whole town with your vocal chords. A few months ago, he wouldn’t have cared, but he was more _respectful_ than that now (well, at least to Luke, but it was progress all the same). “She doesn’t care about anybody’s feelings but her own and you don’t deserve that kind of treatment.” Honestly, how had the woman gotten through life treating everybody so poorly and with such a lack of respect? It must be the money. “You deserve much better than that crap. Do you at least get the weekend to do what you want or is she trying to take that too?”

“Oh, no. We get the weekend, she just gets to take the day that actually matters!” you hissed, your face darkening even further to a deep scarlet. Jess didn’t think it was possible to get even darker than it had been before, but somehow, it managed.

“That sucks, sweetheart. I’m really sorry she’s like this. She’s rude and unkind and heartless and she never learned how to act and it’s completely unfair to you.”

“She is! I just wanted to have a nice time on **my** day. Is that too much to ask?! Am I crazy for wanting it?!”

Before the seventeen year old had the chance to answer your inquiries, another voice did it for him from the stairwell.

“No, you’re not crazy for wanting to have a nice day,” it said in a deeper-than-usual, groggy register, “but what you are crazy for is coming in here and screaming like a banshee so late.”  

Luke. Oh, God, you had completely forgotten about Luke. How could you have forgotten that he was there?! For Christ’s sake, his name was on the sign just outside!

In an instant, every drop of color drained from your face, paling you so much that you had practically become transparent.

“L-Luke, I… I…” you stammered, unable to find the words necessary to apologize, only barely qualified to sputter nonsense. “I…”

Ever the gentleman when it came to his girlfriend, the man’s nephew took the liberty of stepping in and speaking for you. “I think what she means to say is that she’s sorry. She hasn’t had the best night. Emily managed to ruin it all the way from Hartford.”

“Emily?” Luke asked rhetorically, not looking at all surprised. Emily ruining things was hardly unheard of. “Sit down, kiddo,” he instructed you in a gentle tone (one that you absolutely did not think you deserved after being so inconsiderate), his tune quickly changing as he gestured to a stool at the counter. “We’ll get some food into you,” because Heaven knew that the Gilmores thrived on gluttonous amounts of nourishment, “and you can tell me all about it.” He could tell that you were in need of somebody to talk to, somebody that could give you advice but also be appropriately frustrated with you. Luke could see that he needed and that you needed him to act as the middle ground between the attitudes of Lorelai, a neutral party, and Jess, the boy with temper issues who very well might drive to Hartford to murder two socialites in their sleep if he doesn’t chill out soon.

“T-Thanks,” your mouth supplied clumsily as you allowed Jess to guide you to said stool. Once you were seated, he grabbed the one next to you and gave you a soft smile.

The thirty-something diner owner, now behind the counter (who was dressed in an outfit that you were not accustomed to seeing; a plain tee shirt and pajama bottoms instead of his signature flannel button down and jeans), for his part, gave you a single, direct, nod that was meant to serve as an acknowledgement before disappearing into the kitchen.

“Just take some deep breaths, babe,” Jess told you quietly, placing a hand on your back and beginning to rub it in circles, yet another thing that he hoped to be comforting. This time, thankfully, it really was. “Just try to clear your head, calm down.” Boy, was Jess grateful that you weren’t a girl that hated to be told to “calm down”. If you were, he would have ignited an entirely new spark of rage, but luckily, you appreciated the direction that you were being given. You certainly wouldn’t have thought of it on your own, that was for sure. You probably would have just escalated back to being angry, and it was lucky that Jess had gotten in at the right moment for an opportunity at getting you to simmer down to the lesser level of frustration.

Inhaling slowly, you took enough oxygen in to completely fill your lungs before you let it all out just as slowly. After being assured that you were on the right path, you repeated the action, continuing to do so multiple times until you **actually** felt more at peace, not just calmer for the sake of being respectful and trying to fix damage that you had done. You knew that sure, Luke was tired and needed all the sleep that he could get, and you were sorry that you had woken him, but you also knew that he wasn’t angry about the fact that he’d be a bit sluggish come tomorrow. He loved you, your mother, and your sister more than almost anything in the entire world and he’d sacrifice every moment of sleep for the rest of his life if it meant that the three of you were left in good standing. Because this was true, there was no damage **to** fix. You could simply focus on diminishing your level of irateness for your own sake.

After a few more breaths in that same pattern paired with Jess continuing to rub your back in just the same way that he always had to ease your emotions, you succeeded in turning your face back to a normal color and ceased to continue shaking in frustration.

“Okay,” came his voice softly, removing his hand from your back only to sling that arm around your shoulders to pull you a bit closer in order to kiss your temple. “You good, now?”

You nodded at this, providing a non-verbal answer due in part to the fact that you were still afraid that if you opened your mouth, more screaming would come out. You thought it was best to refrain from speaking until Luke came back out.

Thankfully, your significant other failed to press for a vocal affirmation and simply allowed you to remain silent until you chose otherwise.

After that, the two of you just sat in the quiet that was as comfortable as it could be, waiting for the third person in your party to join you.

This didn’t take long, Luke emerging from the kitchen after about twenty minutes carrying multiple plates of food and three to-go cups.

“All right, here we go. One massive artery-clogging bacon cheeseburger with a side of fries, a stack of french toast covered in syrup, some hot chocolate, and-” Luke’s list halted for a moment while he opened a display case and removed some of its contents, plating it on an empty dish, “a huge slice of apple pie.”

Upon receiving your meal, you looked up at Luke only to give him a (mostly forced) smile. Of course, you appreciated the gesture, but it didn’t magically put you in much less of a bad mood. Sure, it helped a **little** , but not enough. Still, though, you had to let the man know that you were grateful. “I see that you haven’t forgotten the way to our hearts. Only thing you’re missing is the coffee.”

“Hey,” he chuckled, leaning on the counter. “You’re already getting the heart attack between two buns and sugary diabetes personified. The last thing you need is caffeine when you’re already fired up and it’s right before a decent bedtime. Hot chocolate, which might I add is loaded with sugar itself, is the best you’re going to get until the morning, Lorelai.”

“Lorelai?” you scoffed, picking up a fork and jabbing it into the item sitting on the nearest plate. “I’m hardly my mother.”

“Don’t make me laugh so hard I rupture my spleen, okay?” Luke grinned. Sometimes, he could swear that you and Lorelai were the twins, not you and Rory. “Forget about opening late, I’ll have to close the diner tomorrow if I’m in the hospital for **that**.”

“I know that sounds like something she’d say, but I’m an individual, dammit!” you pouted, taking a bite of your pie.

“Yes, you are, babe, but c’mon,” Jess began. “All three of you are coffee fiends. It’s in your DNA to beg for caffenation. There’s no denying that. I’m not trying to strip away your individuality here or whatever, but those are just the facts.”

“So what? We like to drink heavenly, delicious coffee. Sue us,” you returned rhetorically. “ **Unlike** Lorelai, though, I’m not going to nag you for any, Luke. Hot chocolate is just **fine** , thank you.”

“Good. I’m glad that you’re content with the, and I use the term **loosely** , healthier of two choices,” the man hummed. “Now, tell me what the issue of the hour is with your grandmother.”

Before you started speaking, you picked up your “heart attack between two buns” with both hands and took a bite so big that Luke (had he not known you better) would have been amazed that everything fit in your mouth, and then you chewed and swallowed way harder than necessary. Eating in this way was your completely law-abiding, under-the-legal-age, Gilmore-style equivalent to pounding a glass of whiskey. Food brought you **comfort** , honestly, and sinking your teeth into a burger as hard as you could served you well in providing emotional relief.

After you finished chewing and had swallowed, you let out a heavy breath, hoping that taking the time to do so would make it more likely that you would explain the situation calmly and not sound crazed (but really, how could anything **you** could do or say come off as insane when it was in reaction to something that Emily Gilmore had done and said?). However, you remained realistic that this ultimately wouldn’t be of much use because as soon as you got talking again, your mouth was likely to be true to its nature and run ahead of your brain. Despite knowing this, it was nothing if not worth it to do your best.

“Rory and I can’t spend our birthday in Stars Hollow. Emily’s making us spend it in Hartford with her since it’s a Friday.”

“And just when I thought she couldn’t have any less of a regard for people not named Emily Gilmore,” Luke sighed, his expression rearranging itself to show sympathy. “I’m really sorry, Y/N. You’ve been looking forward to that day for a long time.” He wasn’t stating this as if **you** didn’t know; he just needed to make sure that you knew that **he** knew that the day, though of arbitrary value in his head, was of significance to you. “I can only assume that it’ll be just another one of her rich people parties, too, right? Because Hell forbid she throw a party that you and your sister would like even in the slightest.”

“Bingo!” you exclaimed, proceeding to stuff your mouth so full of apple pie that both you and your company you thought you might choke if you didn’t swallow some very soon. “I mean, I expect self-centeredness out of her by **now** . I ought to. But this is scaling **below** rock bottom.”

Upon these sputtered words, your boyfriend and his uncle shared a knowing, concerned glance.

“Okay,” Jess began, leaning forward so that he could look at you as your looked down at your plate. “We speak Lorelais and Y/N fluently by now, so we can understand what you’re saying even when your mouth is impossibly full, but **babe** , for God’s sake, chew and swallow before saying anything else. The last thing you need at the end of this day is to die from not being able to clear your airway because it was blocked up by day old apple pie. We’re not goin’ anywhere; you can take your time. **Please** do so.”

You obliged, seeing the seventeen year old’s point and deciding that even though dying to get out of your impending party sounded tempting that no, you, did not, under any circumstances, need to add asphyxiation to your list of troubles. Besides, the event of your untimely death would be placing undue burden on Lorelai, and some people, people such as yourself, actually liked their mothers enough to not wish them grief every waking hour of their existence.

Once you had a clear mouth, however, you began talking again, already seeming to slip slightly back into your ranting mindset. Granted, it wasn’t as full blown as it had been when you first entered the diner, but it was certainly obvious that it was beginning to make a reappearance. The males in your company just had to hope that the worst of it was over and that it wouldn’t escalate back to that level again.

“I mean, it’s not just Rory that it concerns. If it was just her, it’d be different. It’d still suck that she couldn’t spend her birthday at home, but it’d fall on Emily’s night and we’ll have to pry it from her cold dead hands. But it’s my birthday too! I don’t have a deal with her. She doesn’t pay my tuition. I’m fine at Stars Hollow High and as long as I’m at Stars Hollow High, I don’t owe her a **dime** , and mom doesn’t owe anything for me. Friday is **not** her night to take away from me and it never will be. She needs to remember that the granddaughter that **isn’t** in debt to her old, self-centered butt might want to spend **her** sixteenth birthday with her mother and sister. My only way to do that shouldn’t have to be at **her** “gathering”, because, let’s be real for a minute here, nothing she ever holds could be considered a **party** ,” you rambled, finishing your response off with a sentence completely unrelated. “God I wish this was a vanilla milkshake right now.”

You were referring to your hot chocolate which, even despite the fact that you wanted it to have been something else, you were taking down like a runner would a gallon of water after a marathon.

“I’ll keep that in mind for breakfast tomorrow,” said Luke, glad that your anger wasn’t the only thing that you were focusing on. It was a good sign. “Although I do wish you’d ask for a glass of orange juice every once in awhile.”

“You’re gonna have to let that one go, Luke,” Jess piped up, a small smile finding its way onto his face. “This one? Consuming something made of or even **with** fruit that’s not also slathered in chocolate? I don’t think you missed your window of opportunity; there never **was** one.”

Well, he was absolutely not wrong about that. You were half convinced that by now, if you even so much as touched a fruit or vegetable, you’d melt like the Wicked Witch of the West at the end of the Wizard of Oz.

“I’ll be looking forward to that shake tomorrow, thank you,” you told your mother’s boyfriend with a **very** slight grin.

“Mm,” he hummed with a roll of his eyes. “So, I hate to say it, but back to the Emily situation.” Momentarily getting off topic wasn’t a mistake, because a person would have to be blind not to be able to see that you were in desperate need of a smile, but you had to get back on it to resolve your issue. He’d hate to leave you stewing. “Do you at least get the next day?” Honestly, he might have to go down to Hartford himself to have a talk with her if she was planning on monopolizing the entire weekend. There would be no solid way to justify **that** , even in her own reality-distorted Emily fashion.

You nodded your head in answer to this, bringing your left elbow up to sit on the countertop so that you could rest your head in your hand; while you were used to getting to bed during late hours, you had woken up particularly early that morning and combined with your sudden bursts of exertion, you were beginning to wear out. “Yeah,” you added verbally. “We do. But that’s not the point. If anything, **she** should get Saturday, not us. And that’s me being generous.”

“You’re not wrong there,” Luke replied honestly. “Emily is selfish, plain and simple. She’s never cared about anybody but herself and people in her perfect little bubble. Sometimes not even them. She does whatever she has to to get what she wants and doesn’t care about the damage that she leaves in her wake because she’s “Emily Gilmore of the Hartford Gilmores” and others are simply far enough beneath her that she can’t bring herself to feel even the slightest bit apologetic about mowing them down. That’s the way she’s always been and it’s the way that she’ll always be and there’s nothing you can do to change that. You just have to roll with the punches, vent to who you can when you can, and hope that she leaves you something half-decent in her will.”

Somehow, hearing these words (albeit in a much more crass manner) from an adult who was not related to you by blood that said that there really wasn't anything that you could do, but yes, you had every right in the world to be annoyed that it was happening, made you feel infinitely more calm than when Lorelai was telling you the exact same thing without as many colorful adjectives. Maybe it was because Luke wasn't a part of the situation, because he had some distance from the goings on and did not have any obligation to keep family war to a minimum. Maybe it was because he **wasn't** a part of the family (although, truthfully, he was a part of the only section of your family that really mattered). Or maybe, possibly, it was just because the words were coming from somebody not named Lorelai Gilmore. Sometimes, girls just couldn't hear things from their mothers. It was just the way that the world worked.

"I guess so," you sighed, pushing a finished plate of food off to the side. "And I know, I know. I can wish for her to change all I want and it's never going to happen, but I just wish... Ugh, I just wish she gave a damn about our feelings every once in awhile."

"If she did that, babe," Jess began, reaching out to gently move a stray strand of hair behind your ear, "things might have ended up being completely different. You're always reading those fantasy books, right, where sometimes the entire timeline changes because of one little difference in a character? Think of it like this. If Emily was a nicer person, Lorelai wouldn't have wanted to leave her house to get away from her. If she didn't leave the house, she wouldn't have moved to Stars Hollow to start fresh. If she hadn't moved to Stars Hollow, we probably would have never met. Now, I don't know about you, gorgeous, but I'd be living in a pretty crappy world if it was one you weren’t a part of.”

Despite the efforts of both of the other people you had spoken to about your issue, which you were grateful for and didn't want to discount in any way, your boyfriend's logic did the best job of making you feel better. Not only did he explain it using your terms, but he provided an example that made perfect sense (a sweet example, at that). When put in the way that Jess had, you were actually grateful that Emily was the way that she was because in the end, when it came down to things, you won because of it.

Once you allowed your mouth to form to release yet another yawn, one that it had practically begging to let go since your last one, you looked over at the black-haired boy beside you and gave him a sleepy smile, nodding in agreement to his sentiments. "I'm glad I met you, too, darling. I mean, who else would I be able to rightfully use as a human shield in the event of danger?" you teased.

The seventeen year old next to you widened his eyes in faux shock at your comment, clutching a hand to his chest in offense. "Is that all I am to you?" he asked incredulously. "I just told you that I'd hate living in a world without having met you, and you come back with, "You're a good guy to have around in the event of a shooting?!"

"Yep," you giggled, leaning over to kiss his cheek. "But really, thanks, guys. I feel a lot better when my only option isn't venting to a peacekeeper. Not that that's what Lorelai is by any means. And the food helped a lot, too, as usual, Luke." You knew, now, that you'd have an improved shot at getting through your birthday event with more grace than you had walked into the diner with. Well, provided that nothing else went wrong (which you highly doubted). At the very least, you knew that you had people to turn to if you needed to talk again.

"Anytime, kid," Luke assured, flashing the slightest hint of a smile in your direction as he grabbed the empty plate that you had moved aside. "Are you done with the rest of this or should I leave it for about... thirty seconds? That's your record for inhaling this much cholesterol, right?"

"Uhm, excuse you!" you scoffed, still holding a grin. "I don't eat just to pack in as many calories as possible, **Luke**. I eat because I like the taste of food. Give me some credit here. Forty-five seconds, bare minimum."

"Pardon me," he excused, turning around and heading to the kitchen so that he could wash the dish that once held a slice of pie. "So, are you staying over tonight or going home?" he called from his spot in front of the sink as he turned the water on.

"Could I stay over, please, if you don't mind? I think it would be a good idea to stay out of the house for a few more hours just to make sure I won't go back there and find myself at square one again. Mom already said it was okay if I did. I just have to call and let her know."  

“All right, then sure,” Luke replied, not at all doubting the validity of the words that you spoke; you and your sister were two of the most honest people that he’d ever met. It’d be a cold day in Hell before either of you told a lie, to him or Lorelai especially. “Our office turned apartment is your office turned apartment. You can call her from behind the counter.”

“I can go behind the counter?” you gasped. “ **And** use the phone? I must be special!”

“You are,” he deadpanned. “Now do it before I change my mind and make you walk home to tell her. The exercise would be good for you after that cheeseburger, anyway!”  

“Oh, God no, please,” you answered hastily, standing from your seat. “I’m going, I’m going,” you added, making your way behind the counter to pick up the receiver on the black landline telephone that hung on the wall.

The conversation with Lorelai did not take very long, having the duration of maybe four sentences before ending. Within a few moments, you were placing the receiver of the telephone back where Luke had left it last and turning around to finish your food from your place behind the counter. Naturally, this did not come without another yawn.

Jess shook his head upon hearing the third of its kind, taking the cue that it was time for him to remove the plates from in front of you and get you upstairs.

“Hey!” you exclaimed, pouting when there was nothing but empty space on the counter. “I wasn’t done with that!”

“You are now,” he told you once he returned from the kitchen, giving you the best grin that he could with a mouth full of a massive bite of bacon cheeseburger. “There’ll be food for you in the morning when you won’t faceplant into it because you’re so tired. Right now, you need to get some sleep.”

With that, he emerged from behind the counter and walked back over to you. However, instead of sitting in the stool beside yours once again, he grabbed your arm and, hard enough to pull you, but gently enough not to be forceful, he guided you out of your seat and wrapped an arm around your waist, turning your body so that you were directed toward the stairs.

You failed to protest this, instead choosing to lay your head on your significant other once again and walk along with him to the stairs that led to the living quarters of the building. You were glad that you had been given the opportunity to sleep over, as it wasn’t very often, practically unheard of, actually, that you got to see Jess the second before you closed your eyes for the night and lay those same eyes on him the next morning before you had a visual of anything or anybody else. It was a rare experience, but it was one of the best feelings in the world for you to have.

“You could have at least let me take one last bite before you took my plates away,” you noted as the pair of your ascended the staircase. “It’s not fair that you got the last bite of that burger.”

“And a very delicious burger it was,” he added, swallowing.

“Shut up!” you laughed, though not having the energy to lift your head and part yourself from his body so that you could playfully smack his chest. You’d have to remember that you owed him one in the morning when your eyelids didn’t feel so heavy.

Jess shook his head at this as you entered the second floor, his teeth visibly gleaming once again; he always smiled more when you were together, a fact that hasn’t gone over his head. Just as he made a good match for a conversationalist about books, something to your benefit, you were a good influence on him in more ways than one. Firstly, you were law-abiding, which he had never much cared to be before you came into his life. Secondly, you were much more optimistic than he was, seeing the bright side for the both of you more frequently than he ever could on his own. There were many more reasons than that, but thirdly, and most importantly, you made him happier than he ever thought he could be just a short while ago when he was living in New York. You made his life **better** , and he’d never stop being grateful that he met you. No matter how many strikes he had **against** this town, you were the one massive check mark in its favor that actually mattered. You were the one positive that made all of the negatives more than worth it.

“Love you too, babe.”


	3. Chapter 3

"You know, Jess, I don't know what your problem is, but it certainly isn't me," you huffed at your boyfriend, your features contorted to clearly display the fact that you were beyond frustrated. Honestly, you wanted nothing more than to walk away from the conversation that the two of you were currently engaged in, and you were very close to doing so, "and you need to stop treating me like it is. If I wanted this kind of disregard for my feelings, I'd call my grandmother."

You had started this morning perfectly fine and perfectly happy, going about your usual routine as you always had. You had woken up, gotten ready, said goodbye to Lorelai and Rory, then went to Luke's to meet Jess for breakfast. From there, it was all downhill.

Instead of greeting you kindly with a kiss and an enthusiastic exclamation as he usually did, you sat down next to him and he barely even said hello or batted an eye in your general direction. It was only when he noticed that his uncle was about to acknowledge your presence that he looked up and growled out an order not to "tell her **anything**."

When you walked the short distance to Stars Hollow High together after finishing your morning meal, he refused to hold your hand and remained facing forward and silent for the duration of your transport.

He didn't once try to distract you during any one of your classes, instead leaving you to complete your work uninterrupted. Typically, you would count it as a blessing that he wasn't trying to throw you off course with suggestive expressions and passed notes, but when combined with everything else, it was just another bad sign.

And now, here you were, arguing with him in the middle of the hallway instead of heading to your lunch period. Arguing about an attitude problem that you were almost positive you didn't cause or even contribute to, but that he acted like you were the entire reason for. It was only consolation that he was this way with everybody else, too, but you couldn't count on that as an accurate gauge; he was short with almost everybody except you **all** of the time, _anyway_. You couldn't take comfort in the fact that you weren't the only one being treated poorly; you could only feel disappointed that, at least for today, you weren't the exception.

It wasn't as if you didn't know that sometimes, no matter **who** you were to him, you would still be target of some anger even if it wasn't your fault. Jess was a person just like everybody else, and people have bad days. Maybe something happened with somebody **else** that was causing him to act this way. Maybe he didn't mean to unload his bad mood on you at all. Maybe it was just what was happening and he couldn't help it. But even if that **was** the case, you just wished that he'd tell you what was going on with him so that you could try to help, or at least so that you'd understand why he had such a non-existent fuse with you on this otherwise uneventful Wednesday.

Until you knew that, though, you didn’t have to accept what he sent your way. You had tried being nice the maximum amount of times that you were willing, and it obviously wasn’t working, so you had to resort to dealing with this by other means. You could fight back. You could try to shut it down for good. It was the best course of action in your mind, at least in this moment when he had been giving you grief all morning, and you were going to take it.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Jess spat, crossing his arms over his chest and narrowing his eyes even further at you than he already had them. “Comparing me to **Emily** . You and I both know that I don’t even come close, so **stop** . Stop trying to act like you’re the one that deserves to complain because you’re not. You’re not the one that **gets** to be mad today, okay?! All the time you’re mad. It’s my turn now!”

All day, you had been talking to him and trying to be close to him when he obviously didn’t want to be so much as looked at. You were just out to make him more angry, weren’t you? Couldn’t you understand that all he wanted was to be left alone? Couldn’t you **see** that?

You scoffed as this, settling your hands on your hips and digging your nails into your skin so that you could resist the urge to punch your significant other square in his face. You weren’t a violent person by any means, but you were certainly on your way to being frustrated enough to briefly embody one, every word that he spoke bringing you closer to losing your temper.

“I have been trying all day to figure out what’s wrong with you so that I could **help** . And I’m not **complaining** . What I’m doing is not being a doormat. It’d be fine for you to yell at me if I knew was going on, because I could yell **with** you, but you’re making that impossible because you won’t tell me, so the only option I have is to shut you down! I’m not going to let you treat me poorly just because you **feel** like it because again, I did **nothing** to you. So unless you’re ready to tell me what the matter is, I have a class to get to. So do you, but right now, I couldn’t care less if you went to it.” At least if he didn’t follow you, you’d have sixty or so minutes where you didn’t have to look at him.

Barely waiting for the period at the end of your sentence to hit the air, you turned on your heel and walked away from the seventeen year old, typically lovable, rebel, heading to your next class instead of to lunch. It’s not that you didn’t have the appetite for it, but lunch was supposed to be **fun**. You were supposed to sit, read, and chat with Jess. Without him, all that was waiting for you was a crowded room that, for all that you were concerned, might as well have been filled with nothing but a deafening silence. There was just no point in attending. So, in its place, it was off you went to period six you went. The teacher liked you, so you were sure she wouldn’t mind if you made it to her class a few too many minutes early. Even if she wasn’t there and you had to sit in the hallway until she arrived, it would still be better than continuing on with Jess.

* * *

 

Sitting in the hallway turned out to be exactly what you had to do, but it failed to bother you despite the fact that you would usually consider it an inconvenience. At least you could have a couple of minutes of relative silence before the instructional period began, some quiet without the sound of Jess’s shouting ringing in your ears, live and in stereo. Granted, his words still replayed in your mind, but you could change the channel on those whenever you wanted, replacing it with anything that you desired, the task easier than pulling on your socks in the morning.

Yeah right.

There was no way that you were getting him out of your head anytime soon. No matter how many times you tried to move your brain onto a different subject, it would always circle back to Jess. Not only were you subjected to the content of your “conversation” just minutes before, but you also had a front row seat to recalling other details of the morning that you’d much rather forget ever happened in the first place. You thought of how he failed to tease you about how you were on what must’ve been your fiftieth book that week, of the way that his hand fell away from the countertop when you tried to lay your own against it. Of his razor-sharp tone cutting through you like a knife when he told you to “ _stop being so_ **_damn_ ** _happy about everything and just shut_ **_up_ ** _,”_ when you tried to make small talk about how nice the weather was that morning as you walked across the street. Of how you had to put a stop to it in a way that you didn’t **think** was too harsh or over the line, but worried that it might have been regardless.

You rarely ever acted like that, and never had with Jess. Sure, you had had arguments before, but never to the point where you were yelling at him in the middle of the school’s corridor. Was there a way that you could have better kept your cool? **Should** you have keep your cool at all? God, you had just made his day worse than it had been when you walked into the diner that morning. You had **contributed** to his unhappiness, hadn’t you? What if the reason that he was upset wasn’t petty, wasn’t just Jess being Jess and overreacting? What if it was something truly awful and you had just kicked him when he had already taken a beating? Should you just have stuck with him for the rest of the day until you could get him back to Luke, your own suffering be damned? Was leaving him the best thing that you could have done to help the situation? To help **Jess**?  

You didn’t know the answer to any of the questions running through your mind, but you did know the answer to another: No, there was no way that you were getting Jess out of your head for this next class period or until you resolved the situation, for that matter. He was going to be stuck in your thoughts until further notice, and you just had resign yourself to that fact.

* * *

 

Class failed to go any differently than you expected. While your teacher discussed some Shakespearean play or another, you were only half listening. You were sure that you had caught enough to get at least a B on the homework assignment, but aside from tidbits here and there, you were otherwise occupied. Mainly, you were dreaming up every possible horrible scenario that had gone down before you arrived at Luke’s for breakfast, what could have occurred to make Jess so upset between the time when you hung up the phone after saying goodnight the previous evening to the moment you walked through the door of his uncle’s establishment. You were fairly creative, so it was a substantial list. The worst of the ones that were based in some semblance of reality, however, was that he was leaving town. Maybe Liz had been talking to Luke on the phone and had come to understand how much her son’s behavior had improved while in Stars Hollow. Maybe she had been so inclined to ask Luke to send him back, and maybe he agreed because he didn’t have legal bearing on the request. Maybe Jess had to go back. Maybe he had to leave **you**. Maybe he was being so sour with you because he was hoping that if he left on a bad note, you wouldn’t feel so awful about him being gone because you were too pissed at him to miss him. Maybe he wanted to anger you enough and then slip away on a bus with nothing else said, which would explain why he asked Luke not to tell you anything at breakfast. Maybe, just maybe, he was, in his own way, trying to make the situation easier.

But no, that couldn’t happen. That couldn’t be **right** . Jess’s mother was entirely too self-absorbed to want him back even **if** he was behaving up to standard nowadays. Even if he was suddenly well-adjusted, he was still another mouth to feed, a person who takes up space in her home, somebody who gives her less freedom than she believes that she rightfully deserves. Jess wasn’t her son, and you weren’t sure how long that it had been since that was the case. Today, he was just a boy who got in her way. A boy who wasn’t worth her while. She wouldn’t **request** that he was returned to her. Would she?

You didn’t know if you should go back to him to try and find out. Didn’t know if you wanted to know. It might just be best to let him go, to leave things in the best shape possible, meaning that that shape would come in the form of bad terms rather than heart-rending ones that made it worse for **both** of you. To preserve what you had, what you **loved** about being together. At least then, not too many memories would be spoiled by unfortunate moments.

Even still, you couldn’t help that hope that you **weren’t** letting him go by not going back and trying to fix what you had done. You couldn’t help but hope that you were right about Liz not caring enough about Jess to take him back, never mind **ask** for him back. You knew that it was an awful and probably extremely selfish thing for you to think, as you were almost sure that Jess would **love** to be wanted back, would love to be **loved** , but if she didn’t ask for him back, one of the things that it meant was that you wouldn’t have to lose him. You would still be able to go peruse the library together until the sun went down, and you would still be able to walk down just a couple of streets to meet him for breakfast. You wouldn’t have to hear the sound of his voice solely through phone calls (if you were lucky enough to even get those), but rather, you’d have it in the flesh when he whispered in your ear as you fell asleep in the car. If Liz didn’t want Jess to return to New York City, you wouldn’t have to learn how to live your live without him.

* * *

 

As you exited your last class of the day and walked down the halls of the school to the front entrance, you now only half hoped that you wouldn’t run into your significant other on your way out the door, and the part of you that still didn’t want to see him had different reasons than it had before you entered the English room. Now, the only reason you had for not wanting to lay eyes on him was so that you could give him space to calm down and come back to you when he was ready, not because he felt like it was the _right_ thing to do. For your own sanity, you had to believe, at least for now, that that would happen even if it wasn’t anytime soon.

Thankfully, you escaped the school unrecognized, or at the very least unapproached. Shoving your hands inside the pockets of your jacket as you stepped outside, the brisk autumn air hitting you immediately served you well in waking you up from being trapped inside all day.

As you walked home, you tried not to think about how you could go in any direction that you wanted at any pace you pleased without having to say a single word about it. You tried not to imagine the weight that you were usually pressed against or the arm that was typically slung around your shoulders, the added warmth of the body heat protecting you from the chill of the wind.

Instead, you attempted to turn your attention to the leaves on the trees above you that were once green, but had now changed over to being lovely shades of yellow, orange, and occasionally red.

You tried to pay mind to the other people passing by, waving to Miss Patty, smiling at Kirk, and stopping to sit down with Dean to chat for a few minutes as he waited for Rory to get off her bus from Chilton. The distraction of the exchanges with other people, especially your conversation with your sister’s beau, helped to keep you out of your own head, the act of feigning happiness preferable to drowning in the silence of being alone.

As a matter of fact, your talking to Dean helped you so much that you decided not to immediately go home after a respectable amount of minutes had passed, instead staying and continuing to discuss his day, plans that the two of you had for the rest of the week, and some assignment that was getting the best of him, talking through how he could complete it without much more of a headache. Before you knew it, your twin was emerging from the city bus, ever excited to see her favorite lanky boy next door, and almost equally as happy, if not considerably more confused, to see you with him.

“Hey, baby,” she greeted Dean, pulling him down as well as standing on her toes so that she could kiss him. The boy was very nice, but you swore that you would have to get Rory a stepstool to carry around with her for Christmas just so that it wouldn’t be a struggle for her to reach his lips. “And hello to you, sister of mine. I thought you had plans to do the movie theater with Jess after school. What are you doing hanging around with Dean?”

Thinking quickly, you came up with a response that didn’t go into detail, but would be enough to satisfy your sibling. One of the last things that you wanted to do was throw the seventeen year old in the way of a train, certain that he did not need nor would he appreciate having to deal with a chewing out both at the moment and ever, but particularly this afternoon. So, withholding all information of the events of your day, you replied, “Those fell through, but it’s no big deal. We’ll just do it another day.” If he stays in the state of Connecticut, that is. “Since I had some free time, I stopped to talk to Dean when I saw him out here waiting for you. Hope you don’t think I was trying to steal him or anything,” you teased, a smile tugging at the corners of your mouth as you shifted your legs back and forth in an attempt to generate some heat in your body. You’d have to bring a heavier jacket tomorrow, and maybe wear warmer pants. What had you been thinking? You’ve known that you hated the cold your whole life! There was no way that you were dressed to be outside for this long! Where had your forethought been when you were getting dressed? Maybe you had just been hoping that Jess would give you his leather jacket to wear.

“Never,” the girl laughed, snaking an arm around Dean’s waist, needing to press against him, leaning into his body, for her fingers to go from one side to the other. “I know the bad boys are your type.”

The brown-haired tree beside her only echoed this sentiment, adding with a chuckle, “Even if you weren’t head over heels for Mariano, I wouldn’t even be on your radar. I think I’m too “white picket fence” for your taste, Y/N.”

“Now Dean,” you hummed, adjusting the lapels of his outwear while putting on a voice that was the perfect cross of your own and making fun of a mother giving a pep talk to her son. “Don’t sell yourself short. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a good boy. You can’t be a perfect match for every pretty girl, sweetheart.”

As expected, your imitation garnered an abruption of laughs, and although you were snickering right along with them, you managed to squeeze in the statement, “Really, though! It’s true!”

“We know,” Rory giggled. “The world would be anarchy if all the boys were like yours. Balance is a good thing.”

Well, you weren’t going to disagree there. For as much as you loved and adored Jess, he was a handful and a half. You couldn’t imagine how the world could be at all productive if the population was concentrated with people like him.   

“You’ve got that right. You heading our way, Forester?” You began to walk in place so that your legs wouldn’t turn into icicles, noticing that Rory had taken up your former action of fidgeting. It amazed you how she went to school every day in a skirt; those tights didn’t look like they could help very much in the way of insulation.

Thankfully, Dean nodded in confirmation. At least you could continue talking until you got home when you could turn on the television or something to drown out your thoughts, and if you didn’t talk to him directly, at least you could focus on his conversation with Rory. By this point, you knew that it would probably be smart to run so that you were out of the cold as soon as possible, but you supposed it just wasn’t important enough. “I’m sure Rory has homework, and I have a shift at Doosey's today, so I won’t stay, but I thought I’d walk her home.”

“Plus you have that assignment of your own to get through,” you reminded. “Mind if I stick with you guys?”

Rory usually didn’t mind if you wanted to tag along when they went out (because you rarely asked, and you never asked when it sounded like a true date), and she definitely didn’t care today because all it was was walking home (and you’d be heading to the same place anyway; it was only a question of which direction you took and how fast you took it). However, she knew that it might matter to Dean, so she looked to him to give his answer.

“Of course not. What’s that saying? The more the merrier, right?”

* * *

 

You were sat at the kitchen table with Lorelai and Rory, gabbing up a storm and sucking down Chinese food from Al’s Pancake World. Lorelai dished on some eccentric requests and customers at the inn, Rory went on about her history paper that was due next week and how she’d have to be in her room all night working on it, and you mostly just listened, expressing that school was boring as usual (which it was), and that you wanted to pick up the new Backstreet Boys album at the record store in the next town over when it came out the upcoming Tuesday (which you did) because, “Stars Hollow never has anything in stock until the artist who recorded it is fertilizing daffodils”. Lorelai, as you expected, agreed to take you when she got off of work, telling you that you could drive so that you got some time down for your driver’s permit.

Truthfully, you weren’t at all hungry. All that you wanted to do was go to your room, lie down, and go to sleep so that you could start fresh tomorrow and pretend like the day before it had never happened. But if you expressed the desire to sleep over eat because you weren’t in the mood for food, your mother would assume that there was something fatally wrong with you and likely rush you to the hospital to demand care. So, you simply settled for stuffing your face with egg roll after egg roll and mountains of crab rangoon, hoping that the table would run out of food before you ran out of patience.

“I find it amazing how we can eat this much food day in and day out and not explode, or at the very least, get fat,” you commented through a mouthful of pork fried rice.

“Isn’t it? We’re freaks of nature!” Lorelai exclaimed around a wall of kung pao chicken.

“We should sign up for some scientific studies,” Rory contributed, punctuating her sentence by jabbing her chopsticks in the air. “At least then we could make some of the tons of money that we spend on food back.”

“So we can buy more food!” you all said in unison, smiling. You had to admit, it was helping your mood to have dinner with your two favorite ladies and share some laughs, even if it wasn’t much, even if your bad day didn’t dissolve entirely. At least this was a start.

* * *

 

The air in your bedroom was still and quiet, silent even, except for the turn of paper pages as you read through the final chapter of what must have been your ten thousandth fantasy book in your lifetime. You’d have to start brainstorming what you wanted your next genre to be because you were almost sure that you would run out very soon.

You didn’t know how you would be able to wait an entire year or longer for the next book in this series to come out, especially with the way that this final chapter was wrapping up. One thing that you could say that it wasn’t coming together well for the characters **or** your emotions. You didn’t want to give the story up and standby in agony, wondering what was going to happen next, if everything was going to be okay, for at **least** twelve months, but with a knock on your door, you knew that you’d have just a little more time with the fictional world after you dealt with whatever had come up in your reality.

“Hey, hon?” the matriarch of the household asked, opening your door as she spoke. “Jess is downstairs. I let him in, hope that’s okay. Really cold, you know? He wants to talk to you.”

“Yeah, that’s okay,” you said with a small sigh, uncrossing your feet at the ankles before pushing yourself off of your bed and standing. You knew that Jess hadn’t come to yell at you; all day, he had been about ignoring and avoiding you. It would just be out of place for him to erupt **now**. It must be something else. Did he want to apologize? You could only hope, though it was more likely that he was coming to say goodbye. For good. At least he had the decency to do that much instead of simply leaving you in the small town dust. “Thanks mom,” you acknowledged and managed a small smile in her direction before passing her by.

You walked with enough purpose for your pace not to be questioned if somebody was looking, but slowly enough so that you could stay away from your boyfriend for just a few more moments. You were enjoying your relatively safe bubble being unpopped. Right now, as far was you knew for certain, all Jess was was angry. He didn’t want to carry on a kind conversation with you, or a conversation at all, but he was still _yours_. You weren’t alone yet, and you didn’t think that it was so terrible to want to hold onto that for a little while longer.

But it was all gone the second your feet landed on the first floor of the house and you saw him, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket with a face resembling that of a puppy that had just been hit over the head with a newspaper.

“Hi,” he greeted quietly, voice as soft as ever and set in an apologetic tone that he rarely used with anybody, rarely ever **had** to use with you. “Do you think we could uhm… do you think we could maybe talk?”

“As long as it’s not going to turn into a shouting match,” you agreed almost as gently, warning against it regardless as you ran a hand through your hair so that there were no longer strands sticking up every which way. “People around here don’t like much noise past a certain time, yanno. Last thing we need is Taylor knocking at the door to complain, and personally, I’d really prefer to steer clear of laryngitis.”

Jess shook his head, his chocolate brown eyes filled with inaudible pleas as he replied, “No… no. No shouting. Just talking.” He couldn’t end the day like this, with the two of you fighting about something that wasn’t about you at all, about something that only concerned Jess and someone who **wasn’t** you. With things between you in bad standing through no fault of your own, but just because he couldn’t control his anger properly and come to you right away like he should have so that it could be talked out. With you likely being you and overthinking things, worrying yourself over the millions of possibilities of why he had acted the way that he had. He knew you, knew that that was something that you had been doing. Well, if you weren’t still angry with him, that is, because that was also not out of the realm of possibility. You still had a little bite in your voice despite the fact that it had mellowed out considerably from that morning, and you could very well just be holding your fuming in for the sake of civility in your household.

“Okay, then how about we go to my room? We have some privacy that way, yeah?” If you were correctly assessing the situation, this absolutely was a conversation that warranted privacy.   

Jess only hummed a confirmation, following you up the stairs once you began to ascend them. He made sure to keep a respectable distance of three stairs between his body and yours, remaining silent the entire way to your bedroom. The only time he spoke up was to say hello once again as you passed to your mother whom he had come to learn was actually a nice woman. The least that he could do was acknowledge her presence when she had invited him into her home.

“We’re gonna hang out in my room if that’s all right,” you questioned the woman who was coming out of her own room in a different outfit than you had seen her in when you went downstairs; now, instead of her day clothes, she was in her pajamas. That certainly was a quick costume change.

“Of course, babe. But if I find out about a pregnancy in three or so months, it’s never happening again,” she teased. She had had that talk with you before, with you and Rory both, when you became more serious with your beaus; wanting to be sexually active was nothing to be ashamed of, but you had to take the necessary precautions, including the big one of protection. As much as she loved you girls, she wouldn’t wish for either of you to end up like she had. So, in addition to keeping condoms in a centrally available location, the pair of you had agreed to inform her exactly **when** you began having relations of that nature so that she could go about getting you on birth control. In the spirit of full disclosure, you and Jess had not yet reached that chapter of your relationship, but Lorelai knew better than anybody that anything could happen at any time, and that it would positively suck if you were with child after your first experience.

“Never,” you laughed, holding out your hands so that your open palms were facing her, showing that they were empty. “And there’s nothing in my pockets either because of the whole, you know, not having pockets in this outfit. So we’re good, don’t worry.”

When you were granted pass to proceed, you entered your bedroom and Jess followed you, his shoulders slightly slumped and the only sound coming from his person being that of his slow breaths.

Closing the door behind him, you turned to face your boyfriend as you walked backward until you got to your mattress, sitting on the edge of it.

Your eyes hadn’t left him, but his eyes hadn’t yet met yours. He was looking anywhere else in the room **beside** you, in fact; at your dresser, at your bookshelf, and even at the Guns n Roses poster that hung above your bed. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think that he was just there to stare at your belongings for the duration of the night.

But just when you were going to ask, _“So, what is it you wanted to talk about?”_ Jess broke the quiet himself.

“It was Liz,” the seventeen year old admitted, and you could swear that you felt your heart plunge into your stomach faster than you had time to take your next breath. “She called me last night, and we had a fight. A really big fight. I was still angry about it this morning, but I didn’t treat you fairly. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you, and I’m really, really sorry.”

“What was the fight about?” you asked carefully, not ignoring Jess’s apology, but rather choosing to respond to it in a later moment. You both knew that you’d forgive him, so for now, there was a more pressing matter. What happened and how could you fix it? And, obviously, a very close second, would you be single this time tomorrow?

“I don’t know,” Jess sighed, but the look on his face told you that he was crystal clear on the matter. “It’s pretty childish, I shouldn’t have expected…- I don’t know.”

“I think you do know,” you stated, your voice softer than Jess thought he deserved. “You can tell me whatever it is, don’t worry about how it sounds.” One way or the other, no matter what had happened, you wanted to know. _Needed_ to know.  

Jess shook his head, shifting uncomfortably on his feet. Just thinking about what had happened was making him upset, and the last thing he needed was to get that way in front of you. His job was to take care of you in times like that, not the other way around. “I shouldn’t… make you deal with all that. I can handle it alone.”

By now, Jess should know you well enough to know that that just wasn’t going to fly. The tough guy act might work with everybody else, but you knew that Jess just wasn’t all leather and bad attitude. He was a real person with real feelings, just like the more mild-mannered, openly-emotional population was. He deserved to discuss what was bothering him every bit as much as you did, and he deserved to be taken care of under the same principle as well.

“You wouldn’t be _making_ me deal with anything, Jess. I’d be helping you because I want to. Because every time **I** need to let something out, you’re there for me without exception. And you’re not leaving here until you feel better, so you might as well make it easier on yourself and just tell me.”

Of course, you weren’t trying to badger him. You’d never. Not at a time like this. It was just that sometimes, he needed an extra push or more assurance that it was okay to discuss whatever was eating at him. It was just the way that he was, and you knew that he wasn’t taking it the wrong way. It was something that you were working on improving, that was all. It just needed some patience.

“I’m fine with not leaving,” he told you. “It’s not a punishment like you think it is.” He’d stay locked in this room forever if it meant he could be with you. Especially now. He needed the company. “The only thing I need to know is if you accept my apology or not.” His standing with you would always be the most important thing to him.

“It wasn’t meant to be a punishment. I’m just going to do whatever it takes to make you feel better. And if I answer that, you have to answer a question for me. It’s been killing me all day and I… you don’t have to tell me what the fight was about if it’s not this, but I… I’ve got to know.”

“Go for it,” he said simply, concern in his eyes. He knew you probably would have talked yourself into an inescapable hole. You always did when you were worried. But the question was, what had he said? What had he done to make you work yourself up like that? Had it been him at all, or was it just yet another case of how your brain led you down less-than-pleasant (generously speaking) paths?

“Is Liz making you move back to New York?” Asking, you realized that you weren’t really sure whether or not you’d like to hear the answer. Would it be best to take the words out of the air and never make the mistake of speaking again?

“What?” Jess asked incredulously, his expression morphing from concern to confusion and then back again. You could have sworn you’d seen a hint of sadness in there somewhere, but then again, that just might have been your mind playing tricks on you. “No way! No. She’d need elephant tranquilizers and police assistance to drag me out of this town, all right? I’m not going anywhere. That’s not what it was about. You don’t have to worry about that. Ever. I swear.”

He stared at you for a long time, expression firm and eyes fixed, trying to make sure that you understood. It was something you _needed_ to know. “You hear me?”

It took a minute for you to respond, trying to take in all that he had said. Frankly speaking, it couldn’t have more of a relief for those rumors to be debunked. There had been a sick feeling in your stomach all day because of it, and most of it was now gone thanks to the air being cleared. Of course, some still remained because you were unnerved about what it _was,_ if not that, but you couldn’t say that the knots that your stomach were tied in hadn’t been wonderfully downsized. Jess was _staying_.

When you finally did come out of your own head, you nodded at this, standing up and closing the distance between you and your boyfriend so that you could reach out and take his hand. “I understand,” you said softly, using your grip on him to bring his hand up to your face in order to gently kiss his knuckles. “And I forgive you.” How could you not? After all, an occurrence like this was exceedingly rare. “How about we lie down for a bit?” You didn’t have high hopes, but maybe it’d relax Jess a bit if he was comfortable. “C’mon, just take the jacket and the shoes off and toss them wherever.” They could easily be picked up later. “I just got a new blanket last week, it’s super soft and warm.”

You gave the boy a small smile before letting your hand fall away from his so that you could return to the mattress and straighten out the bedding. The idea came to you to run the blanket through the drier so that it was even more cozy, but ultimately, you had to pass on the notion; it would take too long for it to warm up, and you could do essentially the same job just by holding him a bit closer.  

“Y/N, really. I should just go home and we can forget this ever-” he tried, but you cut him off just as quickly as you realized where he was heading on that train of thought.

“Don’t you even think about finishing that sentence, Mariano. I agreed to not pressing you about what happened until you’re ready to tell me, but we’re going to cuddle if it kills us. This isn’t up for discussion.” You were keeping up your end of the deal, and you were going to continue to honor it. But the one thing that you were **not** going to do was abandon him when he needed love.

If he wasn’t so upset, Jess knew he’d probably be laughing right at the moment. _‘We’re going to cuddle if it kills us’_ ? Yeah, sure, that sounded **really** threatening. And if he didn’t love you so much, he’d scoff in your face and tell you to do a better job at sounding threatening- or even so much as coming close- because that just wasn’t doing it at all.

Instead, he simply sighed and shook his head. He knew he wouldn’t win this fight. When you were determined to do something, you got it done. Maybe when he first moved into town it wouldn’t have worked, but you had really softened him over time. His resolve was weaker than it used to be, very much so, and he had a hard time wanting to argue back. You’d already done enough of that today. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” you confirmed, coming back over to help Jess with his jacket (knowing full well that he was perfectly capable of taking it off himself) before laying it over a chair in the corner. “It’s what I’m here for.”

* * *

 

Before either of you knew it, you were curled up in your bed, under not only your new blanket, but a second, slightly more worn comforter, facing each other as you combed a hand through Jess’s dark black locks.

“I brought you a present,” he mumbled after a moment, appearing to have just remembered. “Forgot.”

“Yeah?” you asked, your free hand lazily running up and down his back. He was closer to you now than he was a moment before, his arms wrapped around your waist and his head on the pillow that you were near enough to share. He knew it wouldn’t be long before he had to start convincing himself not to rest it on your shoulder instead. “You didn’t have to get me anything.”

“That’s the point,” he replied, looking you in the eyes. “I _wanted_ to do it.” But let’s just be honest. It had started out serving as a gift to accompany his apology. He brought it in hopes of softening the blow of his destruction, but evidently, that wasn’t necessary. So, now, he supposed that it could simply be called a gift.

“Mmm… Okay. Where is this gift, then? You bring it with or did you forget it at home, too?” you teased, a smile tugging at the corners of your lips. It didn’t take long for you to realize that poking fun at him might not be the current best course of action, but thankfully, he didn’t appear to be hurt by the jab at all.

“No,” he said, the roll of his eyes coming with a forced, lazy smile. If you were putting in an effort, he should be too. “It’s in my pants.”

Before he could correct himself and tell you what he meant (though he instantly realized his error by the way his face reddened), you were giggling. You tried not to, you really did, but when was the time to laugh if not at a spoken mishap like this one? “Come again?”

Jess took a moment to bring in a deep breath, closing his eyes as he tried to find a way to, firstly, get the words that he wanted to say straight in his head and, secondly, his mouth to cooperate. “I meant,” he started again, exhaling slowly as his vision returned, “that I stuck it in the waistband of my jeans so that I didn’t have to carry it. I was thinking about a ‘bring it out at the right time’ moment and all. Wouldn’t’ve worked if you saw it.”

“Ah, I see,” you nodded, understanding clearly now. But even still, your smile remained. Jess was very well-spoken and almost never tripped up on words, so blunders were rare and that’s what made them even cuter. “Need some help grabbing it? Your hands seem pretty occupied locked around my waist, I think,” and besides, one of yours was already back there. Honestly, you were surprised that you hadn’t already noticed it. Maybe it was because you were trying to keep a respectable distance from his ass; now just plain wasn’t the time for that.

Jess simply nodded as his thumb found a place resting in the small of your back. “Be my guest.” He was grateful that you had asked; he was comfortable, and right at the moment, he really didn’t want to have to let go of you. This was the most at peace he’d felt all day, so why would he want to mess up a good thing?

With your boyfriend’s permission, you moved your hand further south, searching for whatever item was back there. After a quick moment, your fingers ran into a more-or-less solid rectangle. Swiftly slipping it out of the makeshift pocket, you grinned. “Found it.”

Upon bringing it into your line of sight, you found that it was a book of poems by one of Jess’s favorite authors. You quirked an eyebrow at him; weren’t gifts supposed to be what the person receiving them liked? But he simply instructed you to open it to the cover page, which you did.

Inside, you found an inscription written in handwriting that you recognized:

 _This is my favorite book._ _Every single one of these poems remind me of you, but the book as a whole is so you’ll always have a piece of me with you. And, this might not- okay, definitely not- be as good as any of the poems in the book, but I’ll try. Here it goes:_

_Eyes that twinkle like the stars in the sky_

_A smile that shines as bright as the sun_

_My dearest girl_

_You mean more to me_

_Than every wonder of this gorgeous world combined_

_You are my everything_

**_You_ ** _are the stars in the night_

_And the sun above_

_You are the trees swaying in the wind_

_The clouds dancing in the sky_

_You are more beautiful_

_Than life itself_

_My most precious gift_

_I’d never wish to harm you_

_You’re like a fresh breath of air_

_After a thousand desert years_

_I will cherish you forever_

_No matter the cost_

_My darling girl_

_You are my heart_

 

  * __J__



 

Reading the words, you teared up, and that caused Jess to begin to panic. The **last** thing he wanted to do was make you cry. With the poem (as with always), he was trying to make you **smile** . This was the exact **opposite** of what he wanted.

“No, no,” he rushed to say, his eyes blown wide with concern. “I didn’t mean to make you cry. Please don’t cry, Y/N. I’m so sorry. Please don’t cry.”

You shook your head, giving him a big smile as tears began to fall out of your eyes and down your cheeks. “It’s okay, baby. They’re good tears. I love it. Thank you so much.”

When he heard that you were okay, Jess smiled, too, and kissed you gently. “I’m glad you like it. I was worried you wouldn’t.”

“Are you crazy? It’s gorgeous, love. Thank you.”

“No problem.”

You spent a while reading to Jess from the book of poems that he had gifted you, and he seemed to enjoy hearing your voice. Your favorite part was reading the notes that he wrote in the margins of each poem, and the circles or underlines that he made whenever something specifically reminded him of you.

His head rested comfortably on your pillow as you read lines from stanzas, and he was quiet while listening. Well, until he wasn’t. Out of the blue, in the middle of what must have been your twelfth or thirteenth poem, he spoke.

“She doesn’t… she’s not coming to Thanksgiving,” he mumbled, knowing that his statement had to be concrete, because it was. She wasn’t making her blessed appearance, and Jess hated himself for being upset about it.

“Who’s not? Liz?” you asked, and your heart sank when he nodded. Jess wouldn’t say it, but you could tell that he had been counting on her coming. She must have told him that she would at some point.

“She said she wanted to spend it with her new boyfriend’s family instead,” the boy explained, and he sounded like his soul had been crushed when he was given the news.

You thought for a long moment, running over the possibilities of what you could say in your head. For now, you decided against attacking Liz and her dumb boyfriend, because even though it’s what would give you the most satisfaction, it wasn’t what was best for Jess. Instead, you went with the gentlest approach you could think of. “That’s okay, baby. You can have Thanksgiving with us.”

Jess looked up at you with incredulity, shocked that you had offered, but seemingly happy. “Really? But what about your mom? You didn’t ask her at all.”

“I’ll talk to my mom later,” you assured him, and his faint smile only grew. “I’m sure she’d love to have you and Luuuuuke over.”

“Thanks, babe. I feel much better, now. And I’m sorry, again.”

Really? You hadn’t even done that much. “No problem. Apology accepted.”

“And Y/N?”

“Yes, Jess?”

“I love you.”

 


End file.
